An Interesting Rolls Find
By Jim Canavan
Thought folks would find this interesting...
I recently came across a box of unusual piano rolls during one of my regular flea market expeditions up to Adamstown, PA. It was a carton of about a dozen 88-note rolls, in plain, dark green boxes. The titles were hand written (in beautiful, old-time script) on white end labels. Tunes are all classical -- Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn -- piano Sonatas, Trios, etc.
I pulled out one of the rolls, and the title was also hand written on the roll itself, along with tempo, and other instructions (forte, ff, etc.). Penciled at the edge were two dates, a few days apart, in 1927. I realized that these were some sort of home-made rolls, and the dates must be "begin" and "end" dates for each tune.
Suspecting that this might be worth taking home, I scarfed up the carton (12 rolls for $24!). Arriving back home in Virginia, I immediately put one of the rolls (the Mozart trio) on my 1925 Weaver/York player, and started pumping...WOW! Whoever the unknown creator of these rolls were, he was a master! By following the expression notations carefully penned in throughout each roll, these rolls sound wonderful! The nice thing is that they're (I believe) note-for-note transcriptions off the actual scores, not like some of my other classical rolls that are a bit too heavily "orchestrated" for my taste. (Also, because they're not heavily orchestrated, they're a breeze to pump!)
Has anyone else come across home-perforated rolls such as these? The guy I bought them from didn't know anything about them, except that they came "from someone in Philadelphia." The perforations are small round punches, and the rolls ends are the regular black bakelite type.
-- Jim Canavan
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(Message sent Wed 13 Dec 1995, 14:30:17 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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