BACK OF THE BOOK
PASHions
PASHions highlights what ASH Clinical News
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In this edition, Karl Theil, MD, talks about player
pianos – the thrill of the chase and the joy of hearing
a piano play for the first time. Dr. Theil is a hematopathologist and director of the Pathology Residency
Program at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Player Piano Man:
Karl Theil, MD
Karl Theil, MD, at a 1929 Knabe
Ampico B player grand piano.
When did you start collecting pianos? What drew you to it?
Collecting player pianos dates back to my high school years, when my
family inherited my grandmother’s player piano and had it professionally
restored. My dad started looking for more piano rolls (the music storage
medium used to operate player pianos, which are continuous rolls of paper with holes punched into them), and ended up buying a broken-down
player piano for $25 just to get the rolls that came with it. Together, we
restored the piano and player mechanism. One thing led to another, and,
before long we had filled the basement with player pianos.
Although I’d taken piano lessons since 4th grade, it became clear
that the piano rolls were capable of much more musicality than I was! I
really enjoyed figuring out how the player mechanism worked, taking it
apart, and putting it back together to hear it play again for the first time.
I love collecting and the thrill of the chase, too. Every Thursday, I look
forward to checking out the musical instrument ads in the newspaper to
find more pianos and rolls.
Are they difficult to find?
Back in the 1970s when I was in high school, player pianos and rolls were
pretty easy to locate – almost none of them worked and people were
glad to get rid of them. Nowadays they are harder to find locally and
the best source is probably eBay. Collectors have a national organizati on (Automated Musical Instrument Collector’s Association, or AMICA)
with regional chapters around the country, which is a good resource. I’m
always on the lookout for rolls at auctions and antique malls, and wordof-mouth works, too!
For the layperson, how does a player piano “play?”
The heyday for player pianos lasted from about 1915 to the early 1930s
– the days when families gathered around a phonograph (which doesn’t
sound as “real” as a player piano), before there were radios, let alone TVs.
The player mechanism is based on air flow: Negative pressure is
generated by operating a foot-pumped bellows below the keyboard. Each
punched hole in a piano roll corresponds to one note on the keyboard.
When a hole in the roll passes over a detector (called the tracker bar – a
linear array of single holes that aligns with the roll), a valve is opened that
directs negative pressure into one of 88 small bellows. These bellows
activate the appropriate key on the piano. Because the negative pressure
in the system is uniform, each key is struck with the same force, lending a
more “mechanical” (and uniformly loud) sound to these pianos.
The most sophisticated player mechanisms operated using electric
motors instead of the foot-pumps and had elaborate ways of quickly varying the level of negative pressure in the system, which allowed notes to
be played with different degrees of loudness or softness, accents and crescendos. These were known as “reproducing pianos” because they could
reproduce the expression in a real piano performance, and these mechanisms were only available in the most expensive, highest-quality pianos.
Many of the famous pianists of the time (including Rachmaninoff,
Gershwin, and Grainger) recorded rolls for these pianos. Unfortunately,
the market for reproducing player pianos crashed with the Great Depression and the increasing popularity of radios.
Although I prefer the old mechanisms and rolls, it is surprising how the
technology has evolved. The modern player pianos use solenoids instead
of bellows to activate each note, and CDs or MIDI interfaces instead of
rolls. You can even connect your piano to the Internet to enjoy a remote
live performance played in real-time on the piano in your living room.
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Which pieces are you most proud of having
in your collection?
We have eight player pianos (5 baby
grands and 3 uprights) and one player
reed organ. All of the main mechanisms
that were manufactured are represented,
and each plays with a different kind of
roll. My favorite is a 1924 Knabe 5’8”
baby grand reproducer with an Ampico
mechanism.
A collection of piano rolls
Are there any parallels between your hobby and
your career in hematology?
The experience of collecting player pianos can
be a lot like the practice of hematopathology
in an academic center: We get excited when we
see the next-best example of a classic diagnosis
to add to our teaching collections. I am just as
impressed looking at the realistic camera lucida
drawings in pathology textbooks from the early
1900s (Were they really that good then?) as I
am with what could be achieved using air, cloth,
leather, and felt in a reproducing piano. ●
Piano roll in place in an 88-note
player piano
February 2016