What music repertoire is available on rolls?

The available titles on rolls of music were based on the respective tastes of the time, which differed regionally - i.e. in Germany, unlike in the USA. At the same time, the manufacturers also wanted to be able to offer a more interesting and wider range of titles than their competitors. Early on, Hupfeld claimed to be able to offer the most important and complete piano literature "the greatest musical treasure trove" - while Aeolian tends to advertise the large selection of different popular titles. In addition to the classical title repertoire, the focus was increasingly on the most current titles.

The political situation also had an influence on the taste of music - marches (Kaiser-Friedrich marches etc.) were strongly represented in almost every role repertoire - especially until 1919, when Hupfeld created a heroic tone painting "Weltkrieg 1914" with accompanying texts for all phases of going to war. Usually there were music titles in the areas of "classical music, opera & operetta, marches, sacred music, hits, dance and light music". The typical repertoire for a pianola comprised 30-50 rolls of music - usually composed of all musical genres.

In the book "Welte-Mignon-Notenrollen" by G. Dangel and H.-W. Schmitz an evaluation of the most frequent titles found in the music roll repertoires of ~60 Welte-Mignon owners has been published. The Top 10 are: Liszt's Liebestraum-Nocturne No3, Paderewski's Menuett, Wagner's Isolden's Liebestodie, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Strauss' Frühlingsstimmenwalzer, Chopin's Ballad No3, Beethoven's Pathetique, Wagner's Rheingold Walhall, Chopin's Ballad No1. Even though this is certainly a Welte-Mignon specific Top10, it is similar to the title repertoires of other German owners up to about 1930. In addition, from 1915 onwards, German Schlager were very much in evidence - in so-called potpourris or collective roles as in Hupfeld Triphonola.

In the USA and the UK, the most popular titles by Chopin, Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner are also represented - in addition, however, American light music of the 1910s - 1930s such as ragtime, jazz, blues, swing, etc. is also clearly represented. A few of these titles can also be found in the repertoires of the then German pianolas - but rather rarely - because this American music had not yet found its way into Germany. After 1945, this music came to Germany on piano rolls in isolated cases. The roles of QRS then continued to offer many of the modern titles for the pianola - but in the meantime the circle of owners of these pianolas was very much reduced.

As the way of playing the piano was different between 1900 and 1930, very interesting titles with partly very different interpretations can be found especially among the recorded scores. The pianists clearly lived out the freedom of interpretation up to the transformation of whole passages. The discussion about so-called faithfulness to the original has been preserved until today - although probably never just one opinion can apply here. Just as Beethoven allegedly refused for a long time to put his musical pieces on paper in order to avoid misinterpretations - and tried to avoid this by trying to introduce extremely precise descriptions for the manner of playing. Other composers listened to the interpretations of their students and sometimes discovered in them the actually desired sound - as once described by Vladimir Horowitz when he played a piece by S. Rachmaninoff in his presence. A title with many interpretations is Rhapsody No 2 by F. Liszt.

Some composers around 1910 used the possibility of recording their interpretation on the music rolls in order to preserve the desired interpretation for posterity. There is an example of the title La Cathedrale Engloutie mentioned by A. Ord-Hume in his book "Pianola" - Claude Debussy recorded this own piece for Welte (roll 2738) and it turned out that he had forgotten an important tempo indication "doppio movimento" on the published sheet of music and this sounded quite different when played on the music roll in this passage by the composer. Under this aspect, the titles recorded by the composers themselves are particularly interesting. The same applies to those scores that were recorded by the direct students of the composers who died before this recording technique was available. This applies, for example, to the Sonata in B minor by Franz Liszt, recorded by the student Arthur Friedheim near Hupfeld (rolls 51890-51891), whose interpretation Liszt is said to have found to be the best.

Although these scrolls with recordings of the composers and pianists are rare contemporary documents, their authenticity can be judged differently. There are numerous examples where pianists found their own recorded scrolls terrible in playback. Often this may have been due to the poor condition of the reproducing instrument - but in fact some scrolls were simply reproduced with poor quality. Not all pianists were willing to invest time in post-production after recording. The quote by S. Rachmaninoff about the Ampico recording mentioned on the first page was probably expressed after listening to the original playback of his playing directly on the recording grand piano - and this certainly sounded very identical. The pianists' sometimes exuberant remarks about the various reproduction instruments should be viewed rather sceptically overall, as they were very often motivated by a lot of money. Not only Eugene d'Albert was signed by these statements of uniqueness about several different systems. Regardless of this, the enjoyment of listening to the different titles on different pianola systems and also of experiencing the sound of the same pianist changing over the years remains.

Many of the pianists and composers of the time recorded their titles on different systems. This was certainly due to various aspects - the technical innovation of the respective systems, the possibility to reach many owners of these systems and of course the lucrative royalties. When deciding on one of the pianola or reproduction systems, it is interesting to check which titles are available for this system. We have compiled a list of pianists and their recordings for the different manufacturers. About 700 pianists have recorded thousands of titles by hand.

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