The tempo of this piece ["Chaconne", played by Busoni] was the subject
of much discussion in the Player Piano Group bulletin some two years
back. There were two sides, with widely-differing and strongly-held
views.  Gerald Stonehill, back in the Winter 95/96 bulletin, gave the
following figures for the roll and why they chose the speed they did:

  The roll is marked speed 50 [5.0 feet per minute] and is 93 feet
  long.  That's 18 min 36 sec at 5 feet per minute - which is the
  speed on the Nimbus recording.

  [ I think the author meant "elapsed playing time".  -- Robbie ]

  Modern recordings for this took:
    11 minutes (Italian transfer),
    12 minutes (1950s BBC transfer),
    14 min 15 sec (another modern recording)
    14 min 30 sec (The Stonehill-Iles 'Robot' at a concert in 1974)

Gerald strongly believes that Duo-Art rolls were recorded without
compensation for acceleration as the take-up spool diameter increases.
The Robot therefore uses an Ampico-B electric drive and large spool, so
has much less acceleration.  Nobody else believes he is correct; what
is the MMD view on acceleration compensation?

That said, I am told that the Busoni CD has the Chaconne taking more
like 15 minutes than the 18 on the 'sampler' CD NI8801.  They've
obviously heeded the comments and re-recorded it!

Julian Dyer

 [ Irregardless of the paper acceleration debate, some player rolls
 [ simply sound wrong when played at the marked speed, and there is
 [ great suspicion that the worker-in-charge-of-marking-the-tempo
 [ was often careless!  It's too bad that an audio recording of the
 [ music roll can't be adjusted by the listener for the desired
 [ tempo.   -- Robbie