Word: pianola
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...perforated rolls of paper capable of reproducing sounds that had been either hand-played by a pianist or simply punched by a roll editor, such as Frank Milne, whose spectacular four-hand arrangement of An American in Paris concludes the CD. Early rolls, played by a device called a Pianola, which fit over a conventional keyboard, were primitive affairs, capable of reproducing notes but little else; much depended on the Pianola's operator, who manipulated knobs and levers and pumped a foot bellows to make the contraption work. Later player pianos put the mechanism inside the instrument, and more sophisticated...
...sound of Gershwin's own playing. "I spent thousands of hours listening to Gershwin's recordings," says Wodehouse, a Stanford-trained pianist and musicologist who got a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1989 to work on the project. Using a rare 1911 88-note Pianola, in conjunction with a new Yamaha Disklavier, a kind of super-player piano that converts a performance into computer information, she was able to realize the earlier rolls. Wodehouse personally operated the Pianola and painstakingly fiddled with the rolls until she was satisfied with the performances. "I put in dynamics...
...Buendia men are introverted, impulsive, richly eccentric. José Arcadio, the founding father, all common sense when it comes to law or town design, is lured into alchemy and other esoteric sciences; he tries to use a daguerreotype machine to find the invisible player of his pianola. One of his sons, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, becomes a revolutionary leader who organizes 32 armed uprisings against a distant and corrupt "government." He loses them all, but wins the war-only to lose the peace. Aureliano II is a roistering spendthrift who takes on all comers in eating contests. He falls only once...
...Chickering, whose owners included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Teddy Roosevelt. Francis Scott Key played The Star-Spangled Banner on a Knabe; Lyndon Johnson has a Knabe, and Bobby Kennedy a Chickering. Other Aeolian pianos, built at seven plants in the U.S. and Canada, include Mason & Hamlin, Fischer, Pianola, Weber, George Steck, Duo-Art, Cable, Hardman Peck, Winter, Kranich & Bach, Ivers & Pond and Mason & Risch...
...leader in the quality field. Today prices range from a high of $7,250 for an ebony Mason & Hamlin concert grand to a low of about $400 for a 64-key spinet upright. After years of lagging popularity for the old player piano, the company in 1956 revived the Pianola, last year's most popular item, with 3,500 sold...