Pianolist's Library Rolls
By Dan Wilson
Paul Johnson says:
> Hopefully this will add a few shreds of information about
> the "Pianolist's Library" rolls Bryan Cather recently
> referred to. I have one in my current roll auction so I
> was able to pull it off the shelf for inspection. It has
> a burgundy box and is titled "Popular Edition, The World's
> Music, Pianola, A New Aeolian Library of Audiographic
> rolls". The tune is Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave Overture".
>
> This copy says "Aeolian Company, Ltd., Made In Great
> Britain" on the roll label. The roll also has a stamp on
> the leader that says "Methven Simpson Limited, Musicsellers,
> Dundee, Perth, Forfar St. Andrews, Edinburgh", further
> pointing to its British origin.
>
> From an eyeball inspection, I would date the roll
> around 1910, give or take a few years.
>
> I've auctioned a few others off (maybe you were the one who
> bought them). The only other color I've seen is a dark
> green. The black one you refer to may just be one of the
> green versions that's aged over the years.
I think despite the burgundy box this is a later series, because the Orchestrelle Co didn't change its name to Aeolian Co Ltd until 1919. "The World's Music" was a cut-price extension of the immensely expensive (and highly prestigious) AudioGraphic series starting in 1925 which had specially-commissioned woodblock pictures from well-known artists (my parents knew one of them and she was given one of each of the rolls her blocks appeared on despite having no pianola, ending up in 1930 with a whole cupboard-full which she only got rid of in the 1950s). I must say the words "Pianolist's Library" faze me, but what will clinch it is that the later series (some of which actually used surplus AudioGraphic rolls complete with all the expensive printing and some of which merely provided a single panel of information pasted onto the start of an ordinary Themodist roll) had yellow title labels.
If the roll is British-made it will, if made after 1920, also have the date code on the back of the paper, either at the beginning or the end. Does it have metal or vulcanite spool-ends ?
I have one (old series) Pianolist's Library roll here, in fact bought from Paul (what an incestuous business this is !). It's Mendelssohn's Wedding March, burgundy-boxed with a clip in the box a la Ampico and typically American in all respects, paper, stamps and style of cutting (slotted, not chained) with metal spool-ends suggesting manufacture around 1910-1912. The box says AEOLIAN and "Themodist-Metrostyle" (the US term) but the Orchestrelle Co in London is mentioned on one end of the box. This period was contemporary with the Pianolists' Club in England, which was fostered by the Orchestrelle Co, had a lending library and its own journal, of which Rex Lawson has a goodly archive. But "The Pianolist's Library" was a plush thing which you sold in a special Chippendale-style cabinet to the fatter pianola-owning cats: Denis Hall has just such a cabinet with a full set of (American-made) rolls. The rolls of this series aren't, apart from the glossy dressing-up, essentially different from Aeolian's other classical output of the time.
After 1919 Aeolian HQ realised that the big money was in pop rolls and left all this kind of thing to Reginald Reynolds in London. I believe the AudioGraphic series, which was master-minded by Percy Scholes, author of the Oxford Companion to Music, ran way over budget and became a liability, though I'm sure it sold a good few player-pianos just as the highbrows were getting into their stride rubbishing them !
Dan Wilson
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