Blog topic: Music

Piano Roll Scanner Project (PRSP)

November 16, 2015

Work on the Player Piano Project (PPP) continues at an impressive pace. Recent achievements include the completed cataloging, by Project cataloger Alyssa Hislop, of the Welte Mignon rolls in the Denis Condon Collection of Reproducing Pianos and Rolls, which can now be viewed in Searchworks; a full house at the project’s listening party last Friday; and most recently the launch of a subproject entitled the Piano Roll Scanner Project (PRSP). The PRSP formally marks the start of the digitization phase of the PPP.

Richard J. Howe Mechanical Musical Instrument Literature Collection

October 19, 2015

Music

New acquisitions

Sound recordings

The Stanford University Archive of Recorded Sound has acquired the Richard J. Howe Mechanical Musical Instrument Literature Collection consisting of over 225 linear feet of publications and documents comprising more than 14,000 items. With this significant acquisition, Stanford Libraries will make available important primary source documents for research to support the newly launched Player Piano Project. The collection will be housed at the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, a leading music archive with over 400,000 items in its permanent collection.

Piano roll lending libraries

October 26, 2015

Music

Sound recordings

“Paling’s Reproducing Records” is not a publisher. Even though that company meticulously adhered their label over the original one (see below) on the container, Peter Phillips graciously let us know that Paling’s was actually a music store in Australia, not a publisher. It was one of several stores in Sydney and Melbourne where one could borrow a piano roll from a lending library for a few cents. This put some of the other stamps and labels seen on rolls into a different context.

Beyond perforations: Welte-Mignon piano roll text and illustrations

October 2, 2015

Music

Sound recordings

“So, it’s the original karaoke machine?”

A recent visitor on a tour to the Archive of Recorded Sound made this comment to me as I showed off the roll I was cataloging. On plain beige paper, at first it looked like a regular piano roll. A label at the beginning. Expression and performance data perforations appeared as I unrolled the roll. Then, at the side: words! You can imagine gathering around the piano to sing along with a group of friends at a party, just as Stanford undergrads may have done at the Stanford Student Union in 1915 or Encina Commons in 1926.

Chopin's signature, from MLM 217 (detail)

Chopin comes of age

October 2, 2015

by Ray Heigemeir

Manuscripts

Music

View or download:

Piosnka litewska (Lithuanian song), op. 74, no. 16 [1830?]

Drei Ecossaises, op. 72, no. 3 (sketches) [1830?]

A song and piano sketches by Chopin share two sides of a single leaf, once belonging to Polish ethnologist and composer Oskar Kolberg (1814- 1890), and now residing in Stanford's Memorial Library of Music. The Kolberg and Chopin families were neighbors, and Oskar followed Chopin at the Warsaw Lyceum, studying piano with one of Chopin’s teachers. Kolberg was a lifelong collector of music manuscripts, specifically Polish folk and national music, which he used in his scholarly endeavors.

Ethel Merman 'open end' interview discovered

September 15, 2015

by Benjamin E. Bates

Music

Sound recordings

During recent processing of the Paul F. Roth American Dance Band Collection, staff at the Archive of Recorded Sound uncovered a rare recording featuring the American actress and singer, Ethel Merman.