Duo-Art Concert Grand
By Douglas Henderson
I read the 2 postings about the "Earwitness" radio program audio regarding the music, which I say is distorted, and this is beyond the myriad false claims and pseudo-history surrounding the media publicity concerning this series.
One must keep in mind that the Duo-Art player, unlike the Ampico, is a *lever-controlled instrument*, electrically-pumped.
A few "Electric Pianolas" were made prior to the Duo-Art, some being advertised in newspapers, and these were simply the same instruments fitted with the Theme-Accompaniment hand controls and not the added- on pneumatic system to graduate them via music roll perforations. (The standard pedal Pianola Piano with an electric attachment pump is not the same type of player, yet these were made in 65-Note through the 88-Note period.) Some early Duo-Art grand installations reveal two expression boxes, testimony to the earlier concept of the lever- controlled electric player action.
Thus, Pianola levers on the Duo-Art player -- assisted by the "additive" 16 increments of the expression system attachment -- gave the residential- size piano a reasonable dynamic range, one that suited uprights up to about 55" high and grands a little under 6' (with the Steinway "OR" being a good example).
If one played the same music rolls on a Steinway "DR" concert grand (or the style "B") it stands to reason that the lever positions -- and related graduations for the Theme and Accompaniment -- would be different, by their very nature. The human Pianolist would take these differences into account, listening to the results while manipulating the hand controls. The music roll would do no such thing.
This is why Aeolian hand-edited (with pen-knives) commercial rolls for use on concert grand players ... and also made totally-different rolls for them as well. It was quite typical on the hand-tooled commercial rolls to add some hammer rail lifting (soft pedal) to the start of a passage and finish it up by cutting in some higher intensities at the other end, leaving the middle to play as before. The concert grands were used for publicity tours, which -- in turn -- sold ordinary sized pianos to the public.
After these limited uses, one of two things usually happened: the player was removed and the "DR" was sold to a school for keyboard playing, or else it went into a movie palace, being available for hand-playing and also for rattling-along muted background music rolls as an entr'acte -- the limited-range expression for Milne and Armbruster rolls serving this second function admirably. It was *not* to the company's interest to have a "DR" out in public, playing commercial classical rolls, for the reasons I just listed above.
Aeolian also had a capability of elongating standard grand pianos, the Steinway "D" included, so we won't really know how many were constructed, but I would assume that about 15-20 were built or converted from standard instruments over the period. I have heard a Steinway Duo-Art "B" and it was pleasant playing the background music rolls, but, being set by the Test Roll at #1 intensity being pianissimo, it never achieved much more than forte when the perforations called for #12 on the levers.
The "B", like the "D", wasn't suitable for the system, unless it had special rolls. Even my "AR" is on the cusp of being too much in the bass register, when controlled by the music rolls and not the Pianola levers. (I compensate for this when making new Duo-Art arrangements, knowing that most customers will have smaller instruments.)
Frankly, I don't think that the downloaded audio, compressed or not, presents the Duo-Art favourably. For one thing, pianos still retain the basic sound when subjected to limiters and automatic volume control. (This is a reference by Robin Pratt to the 'voice-over' music for the radio series.) Videotapes of my two Steinway player grands are compressed, but you can still discern the tone and the dynamics just as you can when playing a symphony orchestra on a Walkman Cassette player with tiny external speakers.
The claims that surround the "Earwitness" series irritate me as much as the heavy-handed musical sample on the Internet. Calling pedal-players "garden-variety honky-tonky instruments" and saying that the automatic sustaining pedal on a "reproducer" (Mr. Fostle's incorrect term for the instrument) are "exact shadings of the artist" is pure hot air.
Master rolls for 88-Note and the "reproducing" (correct term) variety shared the same arranged pedal, neither of which reflected the artist's technique. These statements and the texts which are being published now for "Earwitness" show a lack of understanding about the Pianola medium and a sorry knowledge of musical history.
Much of what I've written above was sent to you and the MMD on 3/23/97, but I hope this additional material will put the focus back on to what the Duo-Art is ... a manually-operated player which has the capability of running the same levers (albeit more slowly when compared to a concert Pianolist). And this, in turn, means that the rolls must be "fitted" to the larger pianos -- either by hand-editing or by making special arrangements for the "D"-size players.
The pianist has little or nothing to do with the making of the Duo-Art rolls here. Perforating to make the hand levers receive "tugs" -- in a similar fashion to the what the human Pianolist does with his/her fingers - is where the musical success lies.
Regards,
Douglas Henderson |
(Message sent Mon 31 Mar 1997, 21:26:12 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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