player piano
Sign in to saveAlso known as mechanical piano, pianola, reproducing piano, piano-player
piano that can play prerecorded works on perforated piano rolls
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- mechanical musical instrument
- Image
- SteinwayWelte1919.jpg
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- Commons category
- Player pianos
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~17 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A restored pneumatic player piano Steinway reproducing piano from 1920. Harold Bauer playing Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22, excerpt of 3rd movement. Duo-Art recording 5973-4
A player piano is a self-playing piano with a pneumatic or electromechanical mechanism that operates the piano action using perforated paper or metallic rolls. Modern versions use MIDI. The player piano gained popularity as mass-produced home pianos increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sales peaked in 1924 and subsequently declined with improvements in electrical phonograph recordings in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction, brought by radios, contributed to a decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “player piano” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.