second wind

[calimac]

Yeah, more about my SFCV article on the Stanford historical performances symposium, because a week has passed since publication, which means it's Letters to the Editor time!

My editors asked me to keep my article well under 2000 words. Why? Because people don't like to read stuff longer than that on the web. I think that says a lot about the web, but anyway ... So there was a lot said at the symposium that got left out of the article*, and sure enough the three published letters, all apparently from non-attendees, zero in on exactly those things. So I got to write a reply (in extreme haste, owing to odd editorial customs) trying to fill in the holes a little.

The first writer was shocked to learn that musicologists are actually giving historical credence to player piano rolls, which he claims are totally unreliable. In my reply I may have shown a little testiness at his having taken an 1800-word journalistic article as a full analysis of a complex musicological problem. But his complaints all came up at the time; some were accepted and some were considered and denied. The correspondent doubts the validity of piano rolls because sometimes they differ from sound recordings by the same person. Indeed they do, but the possibility was raised at the symposium that maybe it's the sound recordings which don't accurately represent the performer's concert style.

So who knows? Certainly not I. The third writer seems to mistake me for an expert on the subject. But I'm actually just a reporter and music-lover who was there to listen and learn, and only tentatively to offer a few opinions of my own, and those more on my personal taste than on musical or historical issues.

*as those of you who asked for my full notes now know; you did all get them, yes?

Comments

[redbird]

Is it naive of me to suggest that if someone recorded both a player piano roll and a sound recording, they might both be valid and accurate even if different? A large part of why we still go to live performances is that if $musician or $band gets up on stage and plays the same pieces of music on different nights in different cities, it won't sound the same each time.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

H'mmm. This implicitly answers the question I was going to ask, but I have to ask anyway: do piano rolls capture dynamics?I thought they were basically a binary thing -- if there's a hole here, depress this key -- but you imply that there are actual dynamics to the thing so that (f'rexample) if I'm playing louder with the right than the left hand the roll will play back that way. True? And, if so, how?

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Yes, I got the notes. Then I promptly went out of town, so I haven't been at the same computer they were on. I look forward to reading them when I've caught up with LJ and some blogs. I expect to mark some blogs as read.

Small world; my teacher in Colorado was also a pupil of Olga Samaroff (as was one of the letter writers).

QRS and Duo-Art were the two reproducing pianos I knew of (with some dynamics). One of the processes, I don't know which, apparently recorded dynamics along with the note information... years ago, I heard something about mercury switches and marks on the roll... after which, I believe, an expert roll cutter had to translate those marks to the rolls themselves. I could see Scriabin not recognizing himself after such a two-part process with human judgment intervening. Nonetheless, I love some of those piano roll recordings, suspicious absence of warts and all.