2018 – 1st GPRM UNI LEIPZIG / GRASSI MUSEUM
Date: 25.07.2018 Location: Grassi Museum Leipzig
Our first global meeting took place at the University of Leipzig - GRASSI Museum as part of the “TASTEN” project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We welcomed ca. 50 experts (in person and on-line) and enthusiasts from universities, museums, collections and institutions from many countries around the world. The main purpose of the meeting was to get to know each other, present local projects to each other, improve networking and agree on concrete next steps.
The following institutions were among the participants at this first meeting in Leipzig:
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mechanical Music Machines, Technical Museum Brno, Mekaanisen Musiikin Museo, Deutsches Museum Munich, Museum für Musikinstrumente der Universität Leipzig, Institut für Musikwissenschaft der LMU München, Augustiner Museum Freiburg, FASZINATIONPIANOLA, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Gesellschaft für Selbstspielende Musikinstrumente, University di Pavia, AMMI, Nederlandse Pianola Sociëteit, Pianola Museum Amsterdam, Ringve Music Museum, Player Piano Group, Musical Museum Brentford, Stanford University, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Universitat de Barcelona, Bern University of the Arts.
Jerry McBride, as one of the driving forces behind the first meeting, had kindly taken some notes of this day. These notes had not been reviewed or checked with all participants, still, they give quite a good impression on what happened during this first meeting.
Over thirty participants assembled in person for the Global Piano Roll Meeting. This was an opportunity for individuals and institutions actively preserving and studying piano rolls to meet in person, exchange information, and to plan for collaboration to advance knowledge in the field.
As an in-official add-on, Marc Widuch organized a trip for a small group to the Eisenmühle in Estertrebnitz (player piano and roll collection of J. Mucheyer), to a Cafe at Görlitz central station with a Rönisch DEA grand piano and a Phonoliszt Piano, as well as to the former Hupfeld Villa, the former Hupfeld factory with the impressive Phonola tower, as well as to the Faszinationpianola collection close to Munich. This very positive tour also lead to the idea of having a new element to the coming GPRMs, a tour to see a significant collection, also to have time to meet and chat.
Introduction
The participants were welcomed graciously and introduced by the meeting host, Dr. Josef Focht, of the Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig. A series of presentations from selected institutions followed.
Presentations
1. Stanford University (Kumaran Arul, Jerry McBride, Craig Sapp)
The Stanford University project started with the acquisition of the Denis Condon Collection in 2014. Since then several other collections have been acquired and cataloging of the rolls has begun. Cataloging of over 1,000 rolls is now available in the online catalog. A roll scanner was constructed and the first scans of red Welte rolls have been produced as TIFF files. From these files, MIDI and WAV files have been created. Work on the project is ongoing.
2. Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig (MIMUL) (Josef Focht and the MIMUL TASTEN team)
The museum has 3200 piano rolls and 23 player pianos. A database has been developed and metadata for the rolls has been entered into the database. Different titles for the same musical work was a problem encountered in documenting the rolls. The sounds of the musical instruments in the collection are being digitized. This is the work of an impressive team of 15 people, who create text-based cataloging, numerical measuring data, image scans, and audio files. The first step in the work is cleaning and conservation of the physical rolls. All of the data is entered into the MIMUL data retrieval system that documents objects, persons, places, events, etc. from which it can be accessed by the public. The system allows for both retrieval and computer visualization of the data.
Several questions were posed to advance the study of piano rolls: a) How to collaborate, b) How to search multiple databases, c) How to share metadata, and d) How to ensure adherence to standards and sustainability of the projects. To answer these challenges, several suggestions were made including 1) developing search capability across different databases and computer platforms, 2) developing standards for metadata, digitization, audio and image files, 3) developing tools for comparison, 4) addressing sustainability and long-term preservation, and 5) establishing best practices for quality control. These challenges might be addressed through a cooperative consortium to develop joint standards, databases, and portals.
3. Deutsches Museum (Silke Berdux, Rebecca Wolf)
The museum has developed rigorous standards for cataloging of piano rolls which is available on the museum’s website. The cataloging interface and fields were designed with the users and their needs in mind. The cataloging records include names and titles as standardized in the Gemeinsamen Normdatei (GND) and the condition and physical characteristics of the roll including digital photographs of each object. The website has links to related literature and references along with information on all of the various roll types. This includes research on tempo markings, watermarks, etc. Research on piano rolls was presented at the Coding DaVinci conference of 2014 and the international workshop, Material Authenticity of the Ephemeral in 2017.
4. Universitá di Pavia, Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali (Pietro Zappalá, Flavio Pedrazzini)
The second prototype of a piano roll scanner has been constructed and work to increase the scanning speed is ongoing. About 300 items have been scanned. Work to catalog and digitize F.I.R.S.T. (Fabbrica Italiana Rulli Sonori Traforati) rolls is the focus of the piano roll project. About 25 percent of the F.I.R.S.T company catalog is held in Cremona and additional rolls are actively being sought. AMMILab is studying all types of mechanical musical instruments in addition to player pianos and rolls.
5. Sydney Conservatorium (Peter Phillips)
Peter Phillips described his process for digitizing piano roll performances, which is a different technique from scanning rolls to create digital image files. He uses a pneumatic roll reader, which operates on a similar principle as the digital transfer for disc recordings. The reader has pneumatic valves that are identical to that in a player piano.
Phillips believes that others do not use this technique because a roll scanner is less complex than a roll reader. Therefore, a scanner is less difficult to construct. Others believe that a pneumatic roll reader is an “old technology” because it relies on a mechanical device, and consequently, it is inferior to modern scanning techniques. A typical flatbed roll scanner is portable, while a roll reader is not so portable. A roll reader requires changeable tracker bars for each brand of roll.
There are several advantages of the roll reader, though. It is an efficient and accurate way of digitizing piano rolls with a throughput of 25-30 rolls per day. Because the rolls are played at their marked tempo, the recording process can be monitored on a piano to give visual and audible feedback that highlights roll errors in real time. The accuracy of the MIDI realization is dependent only on the calibration of the roll reader. In Phillips reader, note timing accuracy is within + 5 milliseconds.
Since 2012 he has made digital recordings of 1800 Welte rolls of which 600 are original Welte Mignon rolls. To create emulations of piano rolls, the expression perforations are converted to MIDI velocity values, and the pedal perforations are converted to MIDI control codes. The emulated piano roll file can be played on any MIDI instrument.
He is seeking rolls from Germany to digitize including Welte-Mignon, Hupfeld, and Duca (both reproducing and hand-played rolls) of significant pianists. He is interested in working with both institutions and individual collectors.
6. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Jordi Roquer)
They discovered a collection of 2014 rolls at the historic house, Mas Roger, in the city of Figueres, Catalonia in 2009 consisting mainly of Victoria rolls but also recordings by Welte, Hupfeld, and Aeolian. The research on the Victoria label uncovered some unknown compositions by Spanish composers. The Museu de la Música in Barcelona embarked on a study of Hupfeld and Welte rolls recorded by Granados, Falla, and Marshall in 2012. This was followed by an Association for Recorded Sound Collections grant-funded study of the dance compositions, mostly unknown, by Mompou and Blancafort in 2015. This led to a Grammy-Foundation-funded study of a selection of Ecuadorian rolls in 2016.
They have digitized 2500 rolls at the Music Museum of Barcelona and 4700 rolls at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid. They want to work with institutions as roll projects are complex and take considerable planning since there are no standards. Their projects have three major goals: preservation, dissemination, and analysis. Preserving the rolls is separate from the musical interpretation of the rolls. Presenting one interpretation of a metronomic roll is not adequate because they were intended to have multiple interpretations. They are also working on graphic analyses that allow for various means for musical analysis. This will open up various areas of musicological study and research. Preserving and cataloging is only a small part of the process.
Cooperation is crucial to advance the study of piano rolls which might be done by institutions (universities, music departments, museums, libraries), coordinated first at the national level, and then internationally. Starting perhaps with 4-6 countries. There are issues of cataloging and metadata and standards to consider.
7. Biblioteca de Catalunya (Lourdes Rebollo and Margarida Ullate I Estanyol)
Piano Rolls in Spain
Lourdes Rebollo focuses her research on the study and analysis of recorded piano performances. Her doctoral thesis, “Iberia by Isaac Albéniz: Study of Its Interpretations through ‘El Puerto’ in Sound Recordings,” analyses with the Sonic Visualiser a selection of recordings of this piece over a century, from Frank Marshall (Welte roll, ca. 1910) to Lang Lang (live recording, 2010). Since 2012 she has collaborated with the Biblioteca de Catalunya in evaluating and promoting its collection of 150 artist rolls. She has given lectures and public performances at the Library, which has an Apollo Piano Player (1913) and has participated in the 17th Diskografentag-International Conference and the Enric Granados Seminar, Barcelona 2016.
At the Meeting, Rebollo spoke on three aspects: 1) reproducing and artist rolls in Spain, 2) a private roll collection in Barcelona, and 3) the complete Hupfeld rolls by Granados. The presentation outlined the various roll companies, roll types, composers and pianists found in different institutions and private collectors in Spain: the Biblioteca de Catalunya, the National Library of Spain, Music Museum of Barcelona, Basque Music Archive, Musical Documentation Centre of Andalusia and Gaudí House Museum, among others. She reported close to 16,200 rolls, of which 87% are standard rolls and 13% are reproducing and artist rolls (2,100 rolls), mainly Hupfeld, Welte, Duo-Art and Pleyela, followed by Virtuola, SM and QRS. She also made an inventory of a private roll collection in Barcelona found by Ramon Sunyer (Biblioteca de Catalunya) and herself in 2016. This rare collection (with a Hupfeld Solophonola-Rönisch Grand) includes 655 Hupfeld Animatic rolls dating from around 1914 representing 86 composers, 105 pianists and a wide repertoire encompassing 120 works of Chopin, the complete (32) piano sonatas of Beethoven and all the Hupfeld rolls made by Granados. Rebollo is preparing a study of these Granados recordings.
8. Player Piano Group (U.K.) (Julian Dyer)
The Player Piano Group has also been involved in roll digitization including 750 Duo-Art, 180 Hupfeld, 70 Hupfeld Triphonola, 360 Welte (T98), and 1154 rolls of various companies and types. Their work includes working on the accurate realization of the expression on reproducing rolls. Much of this talk was devoted to the study and examination of irregularities found in piano rolls in the manufacturing process and how that affects digitization, realization, and playback. In addition to difficulties with the rolls themselves, information published about rolls online should be used with caution as there are frequent misattributions and errors.
This was demonstrated by digital simulation of a Welte roll from a reconstructed master. This demonstrates one possible way to share roll performances without using audio recordings or playing on a player piano.
9. Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors’ Association (AMICA – U.S.) (John McClelland)
This presentation raised various issues that could be addressed by cooperation and issues affecting roll study and research in general. The focus of the remarks was for the establishment of a Global Piano Roll Repository of information. He suggested the establishment of an organization for the identification, collection, and preservation of piano rolls worldwide. There needs to be a standardization of vocabulary used for discussing and describing rolls, e.g, recut vs. reissue.
There is a lot of work to do in the area of cataloging and metadata. Several examples of different “rollographies” were presented including those by Larry Sitsky, Billings, Simonton, and various lists created by collectors. There are questions as to the depth of description necessary for roll metadata, i.e., the number and type of fields need to be defined and agreed upon. This could lead to a master database of roll information, which could be centralized or distributed. Security of the data would be critical, but this also needs to allow for ease of access for both input and searching. He is interested in working with institutions and individuals to plan, set up, and implement a master database documenting all piano rolls.
Discussion
Peter Phillips believes that sharing information and expertise is critical and wondered how the activities of all of the institutions could be brought together.
Silke Berdux sees Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO) as a central database that could be used to facilitate sharing this information.
Heike Fricke of the Leipzig museum suggests that a shared database is a starting point and that a committee could be set up to address these issues.
Julian Dyer feels that reproducing rolls are well represented in cataloging and rollographies; therefore, there is no need to catalog these items again.
Rex Lawson says that reproducing rolls have been a focus of the day’s presentations. Standard rolls should not be placed on the internet at a standard speed as this is a disservice to the rolls and to the music. There needs to be a recognition of the importance of the emotional and expressive element of the music. Further just because a roll label says it is hand-played does not mean that it is. That needs to be known for accurate cataloging. Kumaran agrees that there are more standard rolls than reproducing rolls. Standard rolls are also deserving of study. Lourdes Rebello believes that artist rolls are also important. There needs to be consideration of all of the different types of piano rolls (reproducing, standard, artist or hand-played rolls). Some of this is a matter of documentation and accurate cataloging. This is certainly for future discussion and research. We need as much consultation and open source assessment of these issues as we can. When the research is made public, there should be the ability to add comments and to make corrections.
There were several ideas about documentation and cataloging. The possibility for cooperative cataloging could save the entire roll community time and money. It would be useful to explore the possibility of sharing data between museums and libraries which use different platforms and standards for cataloging. Perhaps exporting and importing data using spreadsheets, which are commonly available, would be an area to consider. The data could be imported into local systems that would then allow for much richer discovery. The foundation of this work would be agreement upon standards which would allow for such data sharing including authority control for the standardization of names and titles. This could build upon the work in cataloging standards that some institutions have done already.
Marc Widuch suggested that we discuss how we could work together to advance the cause of roll research. What are the next steps? Rex Lawson suggested that there be a roll conference with a musical festival included or connected to it. Having the music itself present will also energize and involve the general public.
Peter Phillips mentioned that he was at the national library where he talked to the curators, but few of them know about their mechanical instruments and rolls. He sees the future for the field in academia. Since we have the internet making it possible to share files across institutions, it is not necessary to centralize all activities. This will open up access to people all over the world. It does not matter what database format the data is in, but rather that we share the data. Peter is willing to trade his files.
Popular music rolls will be included along with classical music rolls. There was a question about institutional holdings of nickelodeon rolls, but none of the institutions present have such collections.
Mats Krouthén sees the sociological aspects of roll collecting as having great potential for study. It would be interesting to study aspects of private roll collectors and their practices. It would be interesting to know about the distribution of rolls: where rolls went and how they went and how they moved. We need to find roll collections in various parts of the world, such as South America, that are not represented here. The list of invited participants for this conference was intended to be as broadly representative as possible; however, there are surely more people working in this field, and it is hoped that they can be located and encouraged to participate. It was noted that research on the sociological topic especially regarding Latin America was presented at the recent conference at Cornell University.
There was a general consensus to plan a full conference in 1-2 years to bring together all of the participants for a more in-depth discussion of their projects and progress.
Concert and Poster Presentations
A break in the presentations was made for the participants to attend an impressive concert of the theater organ with MIDI interface at the Musikinstrumentenmuseum which was presented by Dominik Ukolov. The posters included a one-page summary of the projects of all of the participants including many who were not able to attend in person.