This page is still in preparation, but may nevertheless be of interest in its incomplete state.

Easthope Martin pedalling the Grieg Concerto in 1912 with Artur Nikisch and the London Symphony Orchestra.

What is a pianolist?
A pianolist is someone who plays the pianola, just like a pianist plays the piano.

OK, Mr Wise Guy. Why should you need anyone to PLAY the pianola?
Ah! Excuse me for a moment. If the rest of you came looking for information about historical pianolists, and you want to skip this section, which looks like getting out of control, then click historical pianolists now!

Now, look here. Our attitudes to musical performers are shaped by many things, not the least of which is the human element of the performance. If it were enough simply to listen in public to a fine interpretation of a musical composition, then a CD player and a pair of large loudspeakers would do the job every bit as well as a human performer. But while a CD recording may move us in the privacy of our own homes, it takes something extra to bind us together with other human beings in a collective outpouring of emotion. Classical music and pop music are no different from each other in this regard, although the static excitement and volume level needed for disco dancing can be very effectively generated by a DJ and a pair of turntables, rather than a live band. But it certainly takes a good DJ to create a really exciting atmosphere, so the human element is still necessary.

When most people go to an orchestral concert, they instinctively feel that the conductor is the most important person on the platform. There may be individual orchestral musicians who would disagree grumpily, perhaps with particular conductors in mind, but by and large we are all confident that the chap (or lass) with the stick is the one in charge. We reserve special applause for the conductor, although appreciating the individual contributions of the rank and file musicians. Yet most of the people who value a conductor's contribution would regard a mere pianola player as redundant; someone who simply pedals an instrument that is perfectly capable of playing on its own.

These are paradoxical views, since any good symphony orchestra is also capable of playing by itself, and indeed rather more subtly than a pianola left to its own devices. The point of having a conductor is not to keep the orchestra together, since any professional orchestra can do that, almost in the dark. Listen to the excellent musical example on the website of the Prague Chamber Orchestra, although it is worth noting that in this case the leader of the orchestra, the concertmaster, carries out the artistic functions of a conductor, in addition to playing the principal violin.

The Prague Chamber Orchestra is famous for playing without Conductor.

Whoever is doing the job, it is the conductor's responsibility to impart an individual human interpretation to a musical work, because we need the individuality to shine through, especially in romantic music. Now, of course, good conductors will allow their principal players considerable leeway, and part of the skill of conducting is to mould a number of disparate musical temperaments into a unified, mellifluous whole; irascible dictators such as Toscanini are rare in the twenty-first century! But in essence, the conductor's mind is bent on matters of interpretation, because he or she does not personally cause the notes to sound, and what we rise to acknowledge and applaud at the end of the performance is the intellectual and emotional conception of the music.

Well, maybe! This is a fine theory, but other factors come into play as well, since we are all fallible human beings. Television appearances, the size of fees, interesting facial expressions, the concepts of the "rising young star" or the "grand old man"; all of these play their part in affecting our regard for the individual. Audiences are perfectly capable of jumping to their feet after execrable performances, simply because the performer is famous, though this applies just as much to piano-bangers and fiddle-scrapers as it does to baton-waggers.

The pianolist has a similar function to the conductor. Anyone who doubts this has not thought about the subject in detail. Whereas the skill with reproducing pianos, where the rolls were recorded by pianists in real time, lies in coaxing them to work properly by judicious restoration, the challenge of the pianola, when using its normal, non-recorded rolls, is a different matter entirely. Non-recorded rolls, metronomic rolls as they are often called, have only the notes perforated on them. There is no interpretation, either of dynamics or of tempo, and in this sense they are actually far less musical than a conductor-less orchestra, which is at least composed of human beings.

On the other hand, a pianola will not answer back, unlike the trombone player who has spent too long in the artists' bar, or the first violinist who knows the score better than the conductor. A pianolist, with a metronomic roll, is therefore confronted with an utterly obedient instrument, dependent only on the fineness of its regulation, but incapable on its own of any real humanity. There will be many voices raised, particularly in the USA, to say that a sing-song round the old pianola is a very emotional affair, and an intensely democratic one at that, since its whole essence is in the facility which it provides for anyone to play, regardless of musical aptitude. But for decades there have been music roll companies whose whole existence has been grounded on the incorporation of the human element into piano rolls, especially those of the sing-song variety, to the remarkable extent that the player piano is reckoned to have its own "sound," characterised by the slightly jazzy nature of the musical arrangements. There have even been books published on "How to Play like your Player Piano!"

A Sing-Song round the Old Pianola!

Although such singalong music rolls have become a much-loved part of the pianola's character for many people, the instrument was not invented to have a particular sound, and when it became clear that the owners of player pianos were finding it difficult to express the music as they wished, then many different inventions were dreamed up in order to help, such as the "Metrostyle" of Aeolian, the "Artistyle" of Wilcox & White, and the "Temponome" of the Kastner Autopiano.

The question, "What is a pianolist?" will therefore depend on the nature of the roll being played, and on the opinions of the individual player towards the instrument in general. Perhaps one of the best ways of putting this paradox into perspective is to quote Reginald Reynolds, the main pianolist for the Aeolian Company in Britain in the inter-war years, from the cover to his short treatise, "On Playing the Pianola."

"Of the 'Pianola' it may be said 'A Child can play it.' So he can, and, even at a first attempt, with very fair effect. This little book has, however, been written for that owner of a 'Pianola' who is not content to play it in a child-like way, but wishes to make fullest use of all its magnificent potentialitlies as a highly-developed musical instrument."

For those interested in learning more, this booklet may be downloaded as an Adobe pdf file from our page On Playing the Pianola.

The Cover of Reginald Reynolds' Treatise, "On Playing the Pianola."

Oh, I see. You have to be a genius to be a pianola player. How do we lesser mortals learn the path of truth?
There's no need to be sarcastic. In a sense the pianola is very democratic, because everyone who owns one has the opportunity to play it to the degree that pleases them. If you like the old singalong rolls (and we all do secretly), then you can pedal away with very little thought of dynamics, and concentrate on taking Auntie Joan out of herself for a while. There are plenty of examples of this sort of pianola playing on YouTube, and it is clear that the participants and listeners are having a great time.

If you have a liking for marches or foxtrots, then you may find your feet instinctively thumping on the first beat of the bar, and so begin to add a little dynamic interest to the music. In time you might stray towards the light classics, and begin to introduce a few crescendos or sub-accents into the musical mêlée. You might even feel like adding a slight hesitation before some of the more important chords, just as we all ... hesitate in order to emphasise certain words in our spoken conversation.

But if music is as important to you as the light of the sun, and you have been thoroughly bitten by the pianola, then you will almost inevitably want to practise until you find yourself sounding like a pianist who plays by hand. That is not to say that your aim is only to imitate a pianist, but simply that both you and the notional pianist will use a common palette of interpretative techniques in bringing musical compositions to life. Paradoxically, the most complex music can be the easiest to play on the pianola. Conlon Nancarrow's music in particular is extraordinarily difficult for pianists, because the abstruse rhythms are a nightmare to place exactly, but they were not written to be difficult, because they were not written for the piano. Play them on the pianola, at the unvarying roll speeds intended by Nancarrow, and all you have to worry about are a few "terrace" dynamics, in order to contrast one voice against another. Simple!

Conversely, the most natural music on the piano can be the most difficult on the pianola. The tiny inflections of tempo that even the greatest pianists play unconsciously have to be thought out and deliberately created by the pianolist, at least until such matters become second nature. Mozart and the other classicists are especially difficult, in view of the delicacy of phrasing needed, for although one can easily lengthen notes by means of the sustaining pedal, it is not so easy to turn a heavily conceived series of scales or arpeggios into the light, staccato style that is favoured today. That's usually a case for making one's own, new rolls.

So how do you go about all this?
This page was meant to be about pianolists who have featured in the history of the instrument. We ought really to return to that topic, but if you are interested in knowing how the pianola works, or the details of how to play it from a technical point of view, then visit our webpages on How It Works, or On Playing the Pianola. Have a nice day!

Historical Pianolists and Rollmakers
There is precious little information about historical pianolists, except in one or two rare instances. The listings which follow will contain brief details, where available, and will be expanded as the opportunity arises. They include both professional and well-known amateur players. It would be impossible at this stage to place these musicians in chronological order, so they have been alphabeticised for the time being.

Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967)
The former German Federal Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, owned a Hupfeld grand piano with interior Phonola player mechanism, built in 1926, and this is now in the collection of the German "Musikautomatenmuseum" in Bruchsal. The museum's website has a photograph and a brief audio recording of the piano, with a hand-played roll of Grieg's Butterfly, seemingly pedalled without any expression. If you visit this site and are disappointed by the musical example, you can return to our main reproducing piano page, where there is an mp3 of the same piece of music, expressively played.

Jacques Benoist-Méchin (1901-1983)

Charles Blackmore
Charles Blackmore was in charge of the musical production of piano rolls at the Aeolian Company's roll factory in Hayes, Middlesex, after the First World War. Blackmore was a church organist in Putney, to the west of London, and his name can be found on many Aeolian song rolls from the 1920s.

Manuel Blancafort (1897-1987)

The British Royal Family (In Perpetuity)

As noted elsewhere on this website, Queen Victoria owned a 65-note Pianola during the last two years of her life, and she purchased an Aeolian Organ for Balmoral Castle in late October 1894. Queen Alexandra, on the other hand, favoured the Angelus, manufactured by the rival firm of Wilcox and White, and supplied in Great Britain by Sir Herbert Marshall and Sons. Sir Herbert, at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, had been Lord Mayor of Leicester, where he organised the celebrations with such success that he was knighted in December 1905. George V returned to the Aeolian fold, however, and from 1911 onwards the Orchestrelle Company held the Royal Warrant as Manufacturers of Musical and Automatic Instruments, with authority to display the Royal Coat of Arms. An Aeolian Delivery Van in Central London, 1921/22, showing Royal Coat of Arms. The new façade of Buckingham Palace was also completed in 1911, and the organ in the Ballroom was modified to play from Aeolian music roll as well as manually. The then Prince of Wales was taught to play the Pianola by Reginald Reynolds, chief pianolist for the Aeolian Company throughout the 1920s, but the Prince also liked the jazzier side of life, taking an Ampico upright, with its unrivalled arrangements of popular music, on board HMS Renown for his trip to Australia and America in 1921. Queen Mary purchased an Ampico grand for the royal residence at Sandringham, and the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth chose to take an Ampico upright with them on their 1927 tour of Australia and New Zealand, also on HMS Renown. A Marshall & Rose Ampico on the Gangway of HMS Renown, New Year's Day, 1927. In more recent times, Princess Margaret owned a Weber grand Pianola Piano, kept at Windsor Castle for many years, though this instrument may well have come down through the family as a private possession.

Guy Burgess (1911-1963)

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924)

Maria Callas (1923-1977)
Most pianolists do it with their feet, as the old automobile stickers might have said, but Maria Callas was no ordinary musician. At the age of four, she gave her first-ever musical performance by crouching down beneath the black and gleaming family upright and pumping the pedals with her hands. Although her mother took steps to prevent an immediate encore, Callas reports in her fictional autobiography that she contrived to undertake repeat performances, presumably without fee. The story, despite its apparently fictional surroundings, is essentially genuine.

William Candy
Bill Candy, whose pen-name was William Delasaire, was a professional player piano demonstrator for Hupfeld at its London showroom, and gave many recitals of both solo and chamber music. In 1930 he was the soloist in the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Insurance Orchestra, at the Scala Theatre in London. Bill and his brother, John, who was the works manager of the Siggurtson & Perkins (S & P) Music Roll Company, wrote many of the piano roll reviews that one finds in the Player Piano Supplement of the Gramophone and in the Musical Times. Bill was a long time member of the Player Piano Group, and in later life he presented his music rolls, mostly review copies, to Rex Lawson, with the intention that they would one day be used as part of a notional Pianola Institute. Bill died in the late 1970s; he and his wife, Freda, were an exceptionally kind couple.

Gerard Chatfield (1886-1962)
Gerard Chatfield, born in Westport, Connecticut, was an employee of the Aeolian Company in New York, and from announcements of Pianola Concerts at Aeolian Hall in the New York Times, he appears to have been the Company's main Pianolist in the years leading up to the First World War. He must have been a good player, because he frequently accompanied singers and instrumentalists, and in late 1913 was the soloist in the Chopin F minor Piano Concerto, albeit accompanied by a second piano. He was called up in the First World War, and then during the 1920s he became National Program Director for NBC in New York, subsequently joining the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.

John Clapham

Sir Kenneth Clark (1903-1983)

Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1944)
Coburn was an American-born photographer who eventually took British citizenship and settled in Wales. He is best known for his finely artistic camerawork, and created many portraits of literary figures with whom he was on friendly terms, including Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, keen pianola players both. Coburn made many of his own rolls, including pieces by Ornstein and Stravinsky, on a perforating machine made specially for him by a camera manufacturer, but in 1928 the Thames overflowed in Hammersmith, where he lived, and flooded out his entire collection of around 1,000 rolls. During the First War he gave regular pianola concerts at the London home of George Davison, the director of Kodak in Great Britain, and he is marked out as one of the few who performed as solo pianolist in a piano concerto with orchestra, though when and with whom is not known. He was the first pianolist to play Stravinsky in public, at one of Joseph Holbrooke's concerts at Aeolian Hall in London in 1916, using rolls perforated by Esther Willis, the niece of "Father" Henry Willis, the well-known English organ builder.

E.J. Delfraisse
The name of E.J. Delfraisse occurs in the advertisement for the first concert to demonstrate the Apollo grand player piano, held in New Orleans in December 1906. The Apollo was manufactured by Melville Clark of Chicago, who was rather proud of the fact that he was the first to incorporate a player mechanism in a grand piano. The concert programme does not seem especially taxing, and the rather French name of Delfraisse suggests a local connection, so perhaps Mr Delfraisse was the Apollo agent in Louisiana!

Harry Derry
Harry Derry is the only music roll editor from the Aeolian Company's Hayes factory, from the period before the First World War, whose individual name is to be found on piano roll labels. He made many arrangements of popular tunes of the day, including a delightful selection from Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury, which is arguably the best G & S arrangement of the period. It is known that the musical director at Hayes served in the military during the First World War, and this may have been Derry, because his musical arrangements stop at this time. It is probable that he was an organist, because a certain H.B. Derry became an Associate of the Royal College of Organists in 1906, and a Fellow a year later, and after the War, a Harold Derry joined the staff of the London College of Music, and took up the post of Organist at the Chapel of the Savoy in central London, which he kept for around forty years. One cannot be certain that this was the same man, though it does seem very likely in view of the conjunction of dates.

Harry Ellingham
Harry Ellingham came from Birmingham, England, where he founded the Piano-Player Review in 1912, a publication for pianolists and player piano owners which lasted for less than three years, but which was a shining effort in the promotion of the instrument and its music. Ernest Newman, the music critic, succeeded Ellingham as editor, but Ellingham himself ran the administrative side of the monthly magazine, which is still to be found at the British Library and the Central Library in Birmingham. Later on, he used some of his articles from the Piano Player Review in his book, How to Use a Player Piano, published in 1922 by Grant Richards in London. As the player piano became less popular, Harry Ellingham became interested in the allied art of audio engineering, working as one of the BBC's first balance engineers, and writing a series of articles on the subject in the Musical Times between May and November 1938.

Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians (1876-1965)

Edwin Evans (1874-1945)

Frederick Evans (1853-1943)
One can read on the Internet of Frederick Evans' considerable abilities as a photographer, but his interest in the pianola is less well documented. During the course of a long life he perforated around 1500 of his own rolls, many of which have survived at the Pianola Institute and at the Musical Museum in London. Evans gave concerts at the Camera Club in London in 1904 and 1911, and he corresponded busily in various musical journals. One of his particular concerns was the replacement of the normal strength pianola equaliser springs with much lighter ones, allowing (in his view) for the more rapid and effective creation of accents. Evans' rolls may have been created by his own hands, but we owe his wife and daughter a debt for obediently supplying the good man with food and creature comforts in response to his shouts from the cutting room. It would appear that he was not a supporter of Womens' Lib!

Sydney Grew (1879-1946)

Rein Groos (????-1999)
Rein Groos became a pianolist after he had retired as a schoolmaster in Haarlem in the Netherlands. From a musical family, whose members had sung in Haarlem choirs since the early 19th century, he was a teenager during the Second World War, and remembered hiding a group of Jewish fugitives in the old house in which he had lived all his life. Rein was a wonderful ambassador for the pianola, by the way he could engage audiences, especially children, and he toured for a while with the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, entertaining audiences in the foyer during concert intervals. He has left two CDs of his playing, De Pianola in Nederland and My Favourites, which are occasionally to be found on Ebay. Rein died on 31 December 1999, just missing the new millennium, but his memory is still alive with many player piano enthusiasts in the Netherlands, and part of his collection of instruments has been donated to the Museum van Speelklok tot Pierement in Utrecht.

Philip Heseltine / Peter Warlock (1894-1930)

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)

Ernest Hunter

Professor Cyril Joad (1881-1966)

Claude Johnson (1864-1926)
First Secretary of the Royal Automobile Club, Managing Director of Rolls-Royce and musical Maecenas, Claude Johnson was a thoroughly brilliant administrator and organiser. He was clearly an extremely charming man and, according to the late Bob Good of the Aeolian Company, had attractive lady friends in most of the towns of Britain! It was Johnson who launched the international career of the French organist, Marcel Dupré, whom he had heard at Notre-Dame in Paris, and from Dupré he commissioned a series of small Versets, performed at the Royal Albert Hall in 1920 with a 600-strong choir, and in the presence of the Prince of Wales (also a keen pianola-player). Johnson was an ardent and very practical advocate of the Pianola, and he commissioned many rolls of new music from Aeolian, including the Dupré mentioned above, and dozens of works by Debussy and Ravel, which later passed into the general catalogues.

G.C. Ashton Jonson (1861-1930)
Jonson is remembered mainly for his Handbook to Chopin's Works, for the Use of Concertgoers, Pianists and Pianola-Players, first published in 1905, which was so lastingly successful as a vade mecum that in 1926 he was chosen to represent British music at the inauguration of the Chopin Memorial in Warsaw. Initially a stockbroker and amateur pianist, Jonson changed direction in middle age and devoted himself to artistic activities. He travelled widely, on two occasions around the world, and he lectured on music and musical appreciation in Britain and America. At various times he was the Chairman of the Poetry Society and the Hon. Librarian of the Royal Automobile Club, whose first Secretary, Claude Johnson, was also an ardently keen pianolist. In 1915 Jonson gave a lecture on the Pianola to the Royal Musical Association in London, and from the recorded discussion it is clear that he was an accomplished player.

Dion W. Kennedy

Gustav Kobbé

Mlle Köntzler

Arno F. Lachmund
Christened Arnaud Filbert Lachmund, this pianolist and Duo-Art editor was one of the six children of Carl Lachmund, born in Missouri, who travelled to Europe and became a pupil and devotee of Liszt. Interestingly, Carl Lachmund's own pupils included Felix Arndt, who worked for Aeolian, and Charles Gilbert Spross, who recorded Duo-Art rolls. Lachmund Junior altered his first name to Arno at the Aeolian Company, where he shared some of the Duo-Art production and editing work with W. Creary Woods, and in the 1920s he moved to Ampico, where his name became even more anglicised, ending up as Arnold Lackman, if the reminiscences of Adam Carroll are to be believed.

Frits Lang

Jacques Larmanjat (1878-1952)

Otto Lindemann

W. E. MacClymont

Easthope Martin (1882-1925)
Born in Stourport-on-Severn, Easthope Martin trained at Trinity College of Music, studying composition under Samuel Coleridge Taylor, and joined the Aeolian Company in London as an organist, pianolist and demonstrator. He is mentioned affectionately in Elgar's diaries, and he was responsible for creating the Metrostyle lines on the 65-note rolls of the composer's First Symphony, under Elgar's direction. Martin was the soloist in the Grieg Piano Concerto at the Queen's Hall in London in 1912, with the London Symphony Orchestra under Artur Nikisch, and he made a number of 78 recordings of Aeolian Organ rolls. In fact he is best remembered by the general musical public as a composer of attractive songs and occasional keyboard pieces. Sadly, he developed tuberculosis at quite an early age, and was nursed until he died by the family of William Knightley, the Aeolian Company's Export Manager.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

Sir Montagu Norman (1871-1950)
According to the late Bob Good of the Aeolian Company in London, the Governor of the Bank of England in the 1920s, presumably Sir Montagu Norman, had three 88-note Pianolas, attached to three Steinway concert grand pianos: one at his London mansion, one at his country estate, and one at his shooting box in the Lake District, in the north-west of England. It's a good story, and we shall try to verify it in due course!

Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)
Paderewski was the proud owner of not one, but two Pianolas, which he acquired between 1898 and 1901, no doubt as a gift in return for testimonials. There is no particular record of his expertise on the instrument, but Frances Hodgson Burnett, mentioned above, throws some light on the apparent paradox of a world-class pianist needing to use music rolls to play the piano. Writing to a nephew, she explains that Paderewski found the instrument useful as a form of relaxation, and in the playing through of new music. Most present-day pianists would use CD players in exactly the same way.

Charles C. Parkyn
Charles Cleghorn Parkyn started out in Boston, where he was principal 'cellist and manager of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, in addition to running a music store across from the Boston Commons. Around the turn of the 20th century, he moved to New York to run the Aeolian Company's concert activities. In August 1900 he played the Pianola in Pittsburgh, in one of the instrument's first major concerts, accompanying the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Luigi von Kunits, as well as venturing into four-hand piano music with Joseph Gittings, the doyen of Pittsburgh music at the time, by means of two hands and two feet. The concert was sufficiently well reviewed in the Pittsburgh Times that the Aeolian Company saw fit to publish it as an advertisement. Parkyn went on to work on the editing of Duo-Art rolls, under W. Creary Woods, and he met his wife, Ellen Berg Parkyn, at Aeolian, where she recorded for Metro-Art and Melodee.

Egon Pütz (1887-????)
Born in Berlin in 1887, the Spanish pianist and composer, Egon Pütz, trained at the Paris Conservatoire and studied with Raoul Pugno and Teresa Carreño. He first travelled to the United States in late 1910, in company with the French bass, Georges Bourgeois, who was appearing at the Metropolitan Opera House in the world première of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West. In the following year Pütz became an American citizen, and he soon made a name for himself in New York, performing at Aeolian Hall and elsewhere. His talents were spotted by the Aeolian Company, and he joined them as a recording artist for the new Metro-Art series of hand-played rolls. He had the unique distinction of being the first person to record an Aeolian hand-played music roll, and also took part in Aeolian Hall concerts as a pianolist.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Rachmaninov spent many months in 1909 at the estate of his wife's parents at Ivanovka, some 250 miles south-east of Moscow. While there he wrote his Third Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for his first American tour in early 1910, and when not composing or enjoying the countryside, he was able to make use of his father-in-law's upright Pianola Piano. Many years later his sister-in-law wrote in her memoirs that she remembered him pedalling gleefully through the rolls of the Second Piano Concerto, and it is enjoyable to speculate that some of the sunnier, scurrying passages in the Third Concerto might have been inspired by his overfast use of the Pianola tempo control in the Second!

Clarence Raybould (1886-1972)

Vera Reade (????-1986)

George Whitefield Fay Reed (????-1954)
George Reed, born in New England, was Deputy Managing Director of the Aeolian Company in London for most of its active existence. It was he who took a Metrostyle Pianola to Norway in 1903, where he spent a week working with Grieg, playing the Pianola to the composer's direction, and thereby marking up the red Metrostyle lines for Grieg's Autograph-Metrostyle rolls. Together with Percy Scholes, the British music educationalist and writer, Reed was responsible for the creation of the Duo-Art Audiographic project, which saw hundreds of recorded music rolls being printed with copious programme notes and illustrations throughout their length. After Aeolian more or less ceased trading in Britain in the mid-1930s, George Reed bought a hotel in Eastbourne, on the south coast of England, but the Second War intervened, and his venture failed. He died in Bristol, where he worked in his later years as a book-keeper.

Reginald Reynolds

Alfred Riess
The Dutchman, Alfred Riess, was a pianola demonstrator for Aeolian in Berlin, but later settled in England, where his daughter met and married Frits Lang, who appears above. Riess was a member of the Player Piano Group, and stated that he never liked to play anything on the pianola that he could not also play by hand. On one occasion, Denis Hall of the Pianola Institute heard him playing a Viennese waltz on the player piano, in a rather mannered way which suggested that he might not have been in full control of the instrument. To Hall's amazement, Riess then folded the pedals away and played the same piece by hand, identically! This experience was the "Road to Damascus" moment that convinced Denis Hall of the value of the pianola as a serious musical instrument.

Joseph D.M. Rorke (1886-1944)
Rorke was an occasional writer on music, who "discovered" the player piano in August 1911, soon after the coronation of George V. He documented his journey into music and rolls in a little book entitled A Musical Pilgrim's Progress, first published by the Oxford University Press in 1921. The ways in which he travelled through Chopin and Wagner, to late Beethoven and beyond, clearly struck a chord with amateur music lovers of the time, because the book ran to three editions, and continued selling for decades. If you are thinking of purchasing a secondhand copy of this book, which is in plentiful supply on the Web, then be aware that only the first edition has the full references to his passion for the player piano. Rorke also wrote about music rolls in Musical Times, and was the author of a short pamphlet entitled The Happy Player-pianist, published by the piano house of John Broadwood & Sons in London. By profession and calling a Presbyterian minister, Joseph Rorke remained a keen pianolist to the end of his life, with both a grand and an upright player piano at his home. By courtesy of the University of Toronto, a pdf file of the first edition of his book is now available for free download, from www.archive.org.

Dr Agnes Savill (-1964)

Percy Scholes

Max Schulz

Scott of the Antarctic (1868-1912)
As with the expeditions which he rather autocratically led, Captain Robert Falcon Scott gains the titular glory for this particular entry, although on each of his journeys to the Antarctic, the transport and playing of the Pianola and the Broadwood player piano were something of a joint enterprise. On the first expedition, from 1901 to 1904, a piano and push-up Pianola combination was installed on the Discovery, and was played mainly by Charles Royds, the First Lieutenant of the crew. Royds, who later became Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, brought both instruments back to England in 1904, along with a small pipe organ which had been presented to the expedition by the people of Christchurch, New Zealand. Subsequently all three instruments passed to his daughter, who lived in Maiden Newton, Dorset, and for many years the organ was used at the Methodist Chapel in that village.

For the second expedition, from 1910 to 1913, an upright Broadwood player piano was placed in the wardroom on the Terra Nova, and on 20 January 1911, after the Antarctic Base Camp had been properly established, Lieutenant Henry Rennick dismantled the instrument on board ship, transported it across the ice by means of a couple of sledges, re-erected it, tuned it, and played Home, Sweet Home! Cecil Meares, in charge of the dog teams, also played from time to time, and was captured on camera, from which it appears that the piano was specially constructed to divide into two main sections. The instrument was later returned to London, where it went on display at the Ideal Home Exhibition.

In the 1948 film of Scott of the Antarctic, James Robertson Justice pedalled an upright player piano as members of the crew danced round energetically in cossack fashion, crouching down and kicking their feet out, in celebration of midwinter on 22 June 1911. Although the incidental music for the film as a whole was composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, it seems likely that the music on roll was the special Pianola arrangement of the Second Cossacca by Giacomo Marchisio, at one time the chief musician at Kastner Autopianos in London.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Bernard Shaw had at least two pianolas, which were sold at Christies in London many years ago. One of them was a 65-note Metrostyle-Themodist push-up in a light oak case, sold again in Cornwall in 2001. Shaw used his pianolas to help introduce him to music, and he wrote about them occasionally. In the preface to his novel, The Irrational Knot, he explains that "I was an execrable pianist, and never improved until the happy invention of the pianola made a Paderewski of me. I could play a simple accompaniment at sight more congenially to a singer than most amateurs." Shaw shared an interest in cameras and pianolas with Frederick Evans, mentioned above, and introduced Evans in pianola concerts at the Camera Club in London.

Sydney Smith

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

George Swift

Fermin Toledo

V. Toledo

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

P.K. Van Yorx

Lucius Voorhorst (-1981)
Together with Frits Speetjens and Theo Leeuwenberg, Lucius Voorhorst was one of the founders of the Nederlandse Pianola Vereniging, the Dutch Pianola Society. Voorhorst was a solo flautist, composer, and professor at the Tilburg Conservatoire of Music, where one of his colleagues, the composer Jan van Dijk, wrote a Concerto for Pianola and Orchestra, Op. 608, for which Voorhorst perforated the rolls on a hand-punching machine, giving the first performance at the Stadsschouwburg in Tilburg on 8 April 1978. The Concerto was later arranged for Pianola and Wind Band, and a Potpourri was produced, for Pianola solo. Lucius Voorhorst died unexpectedly in the summer of 1981, and the Pianola Concerto received its first broadcast performance at Hilversum on 1 November 1981, with Rex Lawson as soloist. Printed scores of the Concerto are owned by the Pianola Institute, as well as photocopies of the rolls.

Montagu Watson

H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

Frank White

Esther Willis

Dan Wilson (1934-2005)

Sir Henry Wood (1869-1944)

W. Creary Woods

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Francis L. Young