(Robbie:  Don't let me clutter MMD with aimless rambling, but this
   caught my interest.  I lost the entire weekend to sorting through
   Welte and Simonton history, and enjoyed every minute of it.)

 [ It's really quite interesting, Richard.  This sustained discussion
 [ thread about Welte lore in Germany and America is already providing
 [ good clues toward future discoveries, as well as a lot of fun with
 [ speculating.  (Like, "What if Edwin Welte had retained control of
 [ the Welte firm in America, and hadn't been trapped in Germany
 [ during the wars...")  -- Robbie


Each set of audio recordings of Welte piano rolls issued over the last
50 years has included an explanation of the process used to capture
musical expression on paper and play it back on a machine.  The more
detailed accounts are often disputed.  An Intercord CD of Horowitz
rolls, released in 1988, is perhaps the most successful.  It's booklet
merely says, "The whole process of registration was always a well-kept
secret of the firm and has never been revealed.  This only adds to the
enormous fascination of the piano rolls."

The 25 records of Welte rolls produced by Telefunken about 40 years ago
were divided into boxes of 5 discs, and each had a booklet, with German
text, but again contained no real information.  If this set has not
already been discussed in MMD, there might be interest in excerpts of
their review by Rafael Kammerer, published in The American Record Guide
of February, 1961.

 [ Mr. Kammerer's review of the Telefunken LP recordings follows.
 [ Richard's remarks are in braces {}.  -- Robbie


 "Musikalische Dokumente.  Although a number of reproducing piano
  rolls by famous pianists and composers of the past (including
  those herewith) have been transferred in recent years, these 25
  ten-inch LP's issued by Telefunken offer by far the most
  comprehensive retrospect.  Twenty-three performers playing some
  eighty compositions -- recordings originally made a half-century
  and more ago for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano in Freiburg,
  Germany -- are to be heard in this collection...  The handsomely
  gotten up (but not really very informative) booklet, a copy of
  which is supplied with each neatly boxed set of five discs,
  lists these five albums as their first release.

 "For all their limitations {who said anything about limitations?},
  these rolls captured to an uncanny degree the artistry and
  personality of the performers who made them and are therefore
  documents of priceless historical value.  To appreciate them
  fully, however, the listener must bring to them an ear attuned to
  the past and a willingness, however seasoned with the proverbial
  grain of salt, to accept them for what they are -- approximations.

{How can documents of priceless historical value be taken with a grain
of salt? ...  Sorry for interrupting.}

 "While Telefunken deserves nothing but praise for undertaking
  so vast and worthy a project, the results leave something to be
  desired as to reproduction...  The tone of the pianos is often
  fuzzy and lacking in brilliancy...  Occasionally, too, in
  fortissimo passages, the pneumatic player action all but gasps
  for air...  Despite these aberrations, and the fact that
  Telefunken's reproduction is anything but hi-fi, there are
  pleasant surprises in store for the serious listener.

 "The playing represents, on the whole, a more leisurely,
  personal, intimate and free style than that common to our day.
  If less note-perfect, it is no less brilliant and thrilling than
  the machine-like precision of our contemporary dynamos.  By
  contrast, the cold perfectionism of much of today's piano-playing
  sounds more player-pianoish than that of the reproducing pianos,
  the mechanism of which was designed to capture just those elusive
  human traits in a pianist's performance which pianism today tries
  to obliterate."  {!!!}

{The review also mentions earlier records:}

 "The Telefunken Company had transferred 200 of the rolls to LP
  in 1955, taping them in the cramped little room of Welte's house
  on the original Welte-Steinway.  Welte's daughter 'served the
  apparatus' and set the tempos..."

Richard Simonton, Jr.