More player piano stuff!

One of the avenues I’m exploring right now is the subset of piano rolls with human-legible information printed on them. Duo-Art “Audiographic” rolls were a sort of proto-Pop Up Video: They had all sorts of stuff printed on them, from lines marking out phrasing to trivia about the piece (this example helpfully points out the narrative features of the work).

For reproducing pianos, where most of the work the operator had to do was loading the roll and hitting play, these diagrams, illustrations, and text were a way to re-engage the listener with the instrument and to introduce the player piano into a pedagogical setting. (Some even have quizzes at the end, to see what you learned!)

This pedagogical impulse is interesting (and reappears up to the present day in presentations of automatic pianos). More to look into…