Topics of this Prelude:

Artist’s Piano Rolls in SpainRescue, Study and Dissemination of a Musical Sound Heritage.

This project, carried out by the MUSFontes research group of the Universidad Internacional de Valencia (VIU), aims to inventory, document and study the artist’s piano rolls (hand-played and reproducing rolls) still existing in Spain; to contribute to the development of national collections related to the history of music reproduction and to create an online catalogue of these rolls. It also aims to study the canon of European repertoires (18th–20th centuries) disseminated in these artist’s rolls in order to analyse their reception in the historical, cultural and social context of early 20th century Spain. A first step has been the identification of artist’s rolls in the extensive piano roll collections of three major Spanish institutions: the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Biblioteca de Cataluña and the Museo de la Música de Barcelona. This presentation will focus on the Hupfeld, Welte-Mignon, Duo-Art and Pleyela rolls, which are currently held by these institutions. Lourdes Rebollo holds a PhD in Art History and Musicology (cum laude) from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, with the thesis Iberia by Isaac Albéniz: Study of his interpretations through ‘El Puerto’ in sound recordings. She obtainted her MA in Music Performance from The City, University of London, Postgraduate in Piano and Academic Studies at Trinity College of Music London and BMus in Piano from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She studied piano with Jorge Federico Osorio and John Bingham. She has taught for 15 years in the main conservatories and professional music schools in Mexico. Currently she is a professor at the Universidad Internacional de Valencia (VIU). Her research focuses on the study and analysis of musical performance, with interests in historical recordings, 19th and 20th century piano music, performance practices, pedagogy and the psychology of music. As a specialist in music rolls, she has worked with the collection of the Biblioteca de Catalunya and with private collectors. She has participated in national and international conferences on the subject (Barcelona, Madrid, Leipzig, Bern, Guildford). Global Piano Roll Meeting – Prelude

 

Piano Roll Collection of the IPAM now at Bern Academy of the Arts

Thanks to the generosity of Donald Manildi, curator of the International Piano Archive at the University of Maryland, and the support of Peter Phillips and Gregory Benko, the Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB) has been given the chance to receive the extensive piano roll collection from IPAM. This collection, comprising over 3,000 rolls, is an invaluable resource for researchers, particularly due to its several hundred master rolls for the Duo-Art reproducing piano. With the newly completed HKB roll scanner, these rolls can now be digitized and made publicly accessible. This presentation will provide an overview of the collection’s contents and offer insights into the technical and artistic processes involved in the manufacturing of Duo-Art rolls by the Aeolian Company that might be revealed by thoroughly analyzing these rolls in the future. Sebastian Bausch studied harpsichord with Robert Hill in Freiburg and received degrees for organ, harpsichord, and modern and historical piano performance from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Jörg-Andreas Bötticher, Wolfgang Zerer, Edoardo Torbianelli) and in Freiburg (Christoph Sischka). Since 2012 he has been employed as a musicologist at the Hochschule der Künste Bern, pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century piano performance practices in the SINTA programme of University of Bern and HKB. He is one of the creators of the magic-piano.ch webpage and is an expert on the digitization of piano rolls. He is the main organist of three parishes in the city of St. Gallen and performs as a soloist and chamber musician on modern and historical keyboard instruments. He is especially committed to applying the results of his research to his performances.

News and updates from the roll community

– 4th GPRM Meeting in Stanford (US), call for papers, etc. (Kumaran Arul)