L. Carthon seeks (010207 MMDigest) "an external piano playing device
which plays the piano without any physical attachments to the piano
itself."

By "physical attachments" I assume L is talking about things screwed or
permanently attached to the instrument.  It's difficult to conceive of
a piano being played by an external device without being touched,
except by jets of compressed air !

Separate piano-players were the first marketed form of automatic piano
and apart from one or two special builds for enthusiasts, I know of
none available today.  Here's a short history.

The first piano playing machines were hand-cranked roll-playing devices
made in the middle 1850s which were quite small and clamped to the lip
of a piano keyboard.  (This possibly disqualifies them from L's
criteria.) They only played an octave and a half and one survives in
non-playing condition at the Chichester Museum of Dolls and Music in
West Sussex, England.

A larger attachment using pinned barrels, called the 'Pianista', was
available in France between 1880 and 1900.  Only very small numbers of
these were made and I believe only one survives, though the related
'Pianotist' piano with integral barrel is met with often.

The modern era started with Edwin Scott Votey's 'Pianola' of 1897, the
outcome of 18 months' experimentation with pedal bellows, wooden chests
and leather valves.  Roll-playing organs had led the way some time
earlier but did not need the aerodynamic power to play a piano
convincingly.  The 'Pianola' employed the already standard 65-note
organ roll and was taken up by the major organ firm the Aeolian Co.

Aeolian's main competitor the Wilcox & White Co almost immediately
countered with the 'Simplex', a similar device which also used a
65-note roll, but rearranged to make it incompatible with Aeolian's.
This exclusivity of roll design was later seen to be a mistake, as it
rendered the maker vulnerable to being marginalized by standardization
amongst others.

In Germany the 'Pianola' was imitated and indeed improved upon by the
Ludwig Hupfeld company's 73-note 'Phonola' in 1899.  This was greatly
improved two years later by the addition of 'Solodant', a clever means
of allowing the rolls to accentuate certain notes compared to others,
not imitated by Aeolian for another eight years with "Themodist".

All these machines looked similar; like mini-pianos with no keyboard,
they stood in front of the piano they were to play, with a horizontal
row of felted fingers adjusted to rest just above the keyboard.  The
sustaining pedal (and in the 'Phonola' the soft pedal) was actuated by
a leather-tipped boot depressed using a lever on the operator's side of
the player device.  Necessarily, the machine had to be wedged under the
weight of the piano somehow, to prevent it shaking loose when playing
loudly.

In terms of effort, they were not at all hard to play, but gaining the
skill to play the piano with the artistry which would normally be
required of someone using their hands was quite another matter, since
none of the companies except the Aeolian took much trouble to provide
any tuition.

Remarkably large numbers of the 65-note 'Pianola' survive in England,
with copious supplies of rolls, and attest to the skill of Votey's
experiments.  The late models equipped with the "Themodist" device
enable extremely musical performances to be given; it's almost possible
to claim (although I would not) that the machine can't be improved
upon.

In 1909 a "stretch" 'Pianola' playing the new 88-note rolls was
produced: this was identical to the old one but 35% longer and more
complex and for marketing reasons, the export European model had a
large sliding changeover valve enabling it to play both types of roll.
But in 1916 production of all keyboard-players was discontinued in
favour of player pianos with integral mechanisms, which were more
profitable.

As I said, the 65-note 'Pianola' "push-up" (the modern term) can be
found readily in the UK, and for an unrestored and usually silent
example you must expect to pay around =L=150 or $225 (antique dealers
will demand far more).  For a fully restored one, think about =L=1500
or $2250.  Rolls go in auctions for =L=0.50 to 3.50; the repertoire for
65-note ends in 1939 with Meloto and Regent dance rolls.

The 65/88-note version of the 'Pianola' is a great and much-prized
rarity; only 23 or so are known of for sure.  Consequently they go for
high prices.  I have costed the manufacture of a slightly improved one
at around =L=3500 (that would be $5250) retail, which compares with
=L=3300 ($4950) actually paid for a working example at auction in 1999.

That's human-operated piano-players.  But in 1904 the German organ firm
of M. Welte & Sohn brought out the Welte-Mignon, a piano-player with no
pedals.  In addition to the 82 notes, the rolls were perforated along
the edges with dynamic codes which instructed the machine how hard the
notes were to be played and the power was provided by an electric motor
driving the air pump.  Extremely eminent pianists were engaged to
record rolls, and for a few of them the Welte-Mignon remains the only
medium by which we can hear their playing.

This event sparked off a huge battle for supremacy amongst player-piano
makers which only ended with the stock market Crash of 1929; but after
all that, the Welte-Mignon "Vorsetzer" (German for "sitter-before")
remained the only "reproducing" player to have been marketed as a
separate device.  It was discontinued in 1925, in favour, again, of
integral Welte-Mignon mechanisms fitted into pianos.  A Vorsetzer was
also made which contained the more modern Welte Licensee action made in
America, which used the standard 88-note roll format, devised to enable
Licensee instruments to play standard rolls, which the original
Welte-Mignon could not.

Today, a Welte Vorsetzer will probably cost around $5000 unrestored and
upwards of $6700 in full playing order.  Good and convincing results
are possible with painstaking adjustment, but the argument for the
"inner player" becomes evident as soon as you have to set up for a
different piano.  For recitals "push-up" versions of the other
reproducing systems have been specially made and it's always a battle
to get the touch exactly right for the piano and acoustics of the hall.

But that's pneumatic external players 70 years or more old.  Maybe L
means electronic ones, a few months old?  I don't know of any.  They'd
need to handle upwards of 1500 watts to give a concert performance !

Dan Wilson

 [ The Pianocorder solenoid player dims the lights noticably when big
 [ chords are played.  -- Robbie