Hi Peter,  Just read your posting in the MMD.  I got into players,
officially, in 1952 knowing that they were machines and also knowing
that levers were on Duo-art pianos for a purpose.  So, I was
never disappointed about fake-Hofmann rolls, where Rage Over The Lost
Penny (Beethoven) and other titles were totally mathematical in whole
or in part.  I wanted music, just as the people who first bought
the instruments did.  Most original owners, and I knew many, called
their Ampico or Welte a "player-piano which doesn't require
pedalling and/or rewinds all by itself."  Most -- as do I -- talked
about titles and not artists.

Revisionism by the modern player clubs is the source of all this
recycled fakery, sorry to say, especially with trashy words like
"snake-bites" for the solo accent holes and "reproducer"/"pumper" for
the instruments -- both incorrect terms.

Rolls were a method of income, not for preserving artists.  When
Hofmann got his $1000 per roll Aeolian contract (and his letters on the
subject were privately published by his widow), he kept saying that
Godowsky "couldn't believe it", having received something like $3000
for 16 rolls, a bit earlier.  I could believe it.  Godowsky was a
musician's musician in every sense of the word, and a good composer as
well.

Hofmann was good looking, and his portrait in music stores sold
Steinway pianos and/or Aeolian players.  Being involved with the Curtis
publishing family, he was writing columns in the 'Ladies Home Journal'
and was also the director of the Curtis Music Institute in Philadelphia.
Hofmann had a social life in addition to his handsome appearance in the
'Teens and the 'Twenties.  No wonder Aeolian paid more for his name,
even though he didn't have to show up for some of the music roll
recordings!

The fact is, you can't record keyboard attack or pedal shadings from
a live performance.  Doing so introduces many variables in addition to
erratic rhythm.  It was far easier to pay for the artist's name and
market the instruments in those naive days, before talking pictures,
radio broadcasting and better communications arrived on the scene.

In a sense, this business of buying-the-artist still goes on.  After
posting my William Bolcom article in The Pianola News (see one of the
back issues at my web site) -- I got a message from Bob Berkman at QRS.
At his suggestion I rewrote some of the text, which involved my
conversations with the pianist-composer, during his Maine appearances
at Bowdoin College.  Bob never negated my allegations that one can tell
which rolls in the Celebrity Series were 'arranged' by Brian Williams
and later on by Rudy Martin [from the marked material that came from
the 'recording' piano], but he did write: "We have the signed contracts
with Mr. Bolcom, from 1975..." -- translation: (Well, you can figure
out the gist of this for yourself).

Ernest Hutcheson, whose name appeared on Aeolian rolls, wrote that
the Pianola became a "prostitute" in a 1931 Editorial in Musician
Magazine ... after the collapse of the player industry, following his
switch to electric 78's and radio broadcasting, of course.
Translation: when the money flow stops, the complaints begin.

Like many musicians, including Harold Bauer, Hutchenson believed in
the personal interpretation of rolls as an 'music educator', and he
wasn't happy with the promotional claims when arrangements (often
already on annotated 88-Note rolls) became 'reproducing' editions.
(Aeolian had those signed contracts, however.)

Many early Duo-Art rolls, such as the Bauer releases, were made with
Bauer 'interpreting' his 88-Note and/or 65-Note rolls on a 'recording'
piano in a hotel room, where a series of artists were signed-up to
play their Metrostyle rolls, which were sheet music transfers and not
keyboard performances.  Needless to say, these early #5500-series
Duo-Art rolls were often jerky and unpleasant to hear!

(Some of these annotated 65/88-Note rolls were edited in Camden, Maine,
at Bauer's vacation retreat, and brought back to New York City in the
Fall.  This is what Bauer means in his 'Forties autobiography when he
says that some of his rolls were made into Duo-Art releases later
on.)

Aeolian endorsements often took the Pianola testimonials and grafted
them onto Duo-Art advertisements.  The pianist was originally talking
about 65-Note pushup players or 88-Note pedal player pianos, and the
advertising puffery recycled these statements for later electric
Duo-Art promotions.

Listen to the music and forget the artist, Peter, and everything
will fall into place!

By the way, my system of compression -- cutting down to an
approximate 128th of a note -- simulates but does not replicate
keyboard attack.  Thus, I've played on the stage side-by-side with
William Albright, Max Morath, Masanobu Ikemiya and others.  (Just got a
letter from Ragtime pianist Terry Parrish today, after many years,
asking about some of my music roll projects.  If I didn't approach the
recognizable 'striking' of specific artists, correspondence of this
kind would never arrive in my mailbox.)

But -- I don't say that my roll of Pickles & Peppers Rag is a
"recording" of Masanobu Ikemiya, of the NY Ragtime Orchestra and the
Arcady Music Festival in Bar Harbor, Maine.  Read my descriptive text
on the Artcraft web site for the story about my playing of this roll --
arranged from an audio Cassette of Masanubo's live performance -- and
you'll see how concert artists view this kind of music, which I call
'Interpretive Arrangements':

    http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/rolls2.htm

The Internet text will give you the background for this particular
roll!  (Scroll down to Pickles & Peppers at the URL given above.)

The performance, not the pedigree, is the essence of Player-piano rolls,
and that's the best part of this arranged music medium!  You -- the
listener -- can fine-tune the performance to your own piano and/or
musical taste.  A Pianolist is a pneumatic conductor, musically
speaking, able to accept or reject or modify many elements of the
perforated arrangement.  What a fascinating artistic medium the
Player-Piano can be!

Regards,
Douglas Henderson
ARTCRAFT Music Rolls
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/