The Day the Music Died

A bit of history died last week. The last company in America to produce player piano music has ceased production of the paper rolls. QRS Music Technologies halted production of player piano rolls 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago. Some of the machinery that was shut down last week had been built in the 1880s.

To be sure, this is not the end of automated music: the company continues to make digitized and computerized player-piano technology that runs on CDs. The company’s fortunes in recent years have been tied to Pianomation, the digitized player-piano system that can be retrofitted on most acoustic pianos. QRS also pre-installs the system on some of its own Story and Clark grand pianos.

The Pianomation systems sell for between $6,000 and $8,000, not including the piano.  Somehow, a cold digital player piano doesn't seem to have the same charm as a paper roll.

You can read more at the Buffalo News web site at http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/538967.html.

Comments

[Cheryle Hoover Davis]

Oh, that's sad. I remember playing one of those old pianos, as a girl, that a neighbor had stored in her basement. She'd allow me to help her put the rolls on the piano and make it go! I loved it.

[theKiwi]

Friends of ours had such a piano and rolls that they no longer wanted. They sold the rolls and made the purchaser take the piano also.

[Patsy]

We were lucky enough to inherit a player piano when I was a teen in the 70's. We had a lot of fun with that player. We got a cabinet full of rolls with it; some were playable, some had tears in the paper which made it difficult to get the roll moving. My favorite was The Pennsylvania Polka. When my mother passed away in 2006, no one wanted the piano and rolls, so it still sits in the basement, and the house is rented out. My mother had removed the player's guts, intending to have them restored. I'm not sure if those are in the basement. Thanks for the article, Dick. It brought back many fun memories.

[Nat Taylor]

Our player piano was bought new by my grandparents just after they were married in 1922. I remember it only wheezing when I was a kid in the 70s, as the pneumatic tubing had dried and crumbled away sometime mid-century, though we still had a stack of rolls. I inherited the piano in the 90s, and after the third or fourth *annual* (!) move of this several-hundred-pound item I carefully removed the player mechanism to lighten it (also freeing up the action slightly, and allowing a brighter, fuller sound in the now emptier deep box). I was sad to say goodbye to the player mechanism--I left it outside for steampunk scavengers--but the piano is still with us and in good shape, much easier to tune and maintain. And we still have 8 or 9 rolls, from the 20s (the ones I couldn't bear to part with) sitting on top of it. My oldest daughter, in her second year of lessons, is getting good!

[Liza]

Oh no! I'm heading to their website now to shop shop shop. My dad restored our player piano in the 70s and just this Christmas I held a sing-a-long with family and friends 'round the ole player piano. It was always a novelty with acquaintances (they may not remember our names, but they remember our piano!) and has given the family many many happy hours, especially when my teenage cousins and I discoverd the roll "In Heaven There Ain't No Beer" LOL.