A Temple of Music

 

The building seems to gleam
like a small cloud floating above the city.
The distant shape could be a stately palace,
a venerable basilica, or a grand museum.
But from its location in this illustration
there's a suggestion that this place
should be the focus of the viewer's attention.

In a way it is all those things, and more. 

This was, and still is, a true temple of music.

It is the Festspielhaus of Bayreuth.
The living shrine to the music of Richard Wagner.

 

The Festspielhaus is seen faintly in the back center of this colorized bird's-eye-view of the city of Bayreuth which is situated in Bavaria, about 48 miles northeast of Nürnberg. The postcard was printed by Ottmar Zieher of München and, based on my analysis of Google's modern maps, was likely made from a photo taken from atop the 16th century tower at the famous Schlosskirche in Bayreuth.  

The postcard was sent from Bayreuth on 15 July 1902 at 3-4 PM and arrived at Wunsiedel, a town 25 miles east, a few hours later at 7-8 PM. It was probably no more than a quick message of safe arrival written on a tourist postcard but it serves to demonstrate a bit of German culture that still retains the same qualities 120 years later.

The Festspielhaus of Bayreuth was built by the composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) specifically for the performances of his operas. Work on the theater's foundation began in May 1872 and the theater opened in August 1876 with the premiere of Wagner's complete four-opera cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The four operas, in order, are:

1. Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
2. Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
3. Siegfried
4. Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)

The Ring Cycle, as it is commonly called, is considered the most challenging production for any opera company to undertake as it requires four separate performances which together total about 15 hours of playing time. Götterdämmerung, the last opera, is typically 5 hours long. In recent times since WW II, with the exception of 2020's pandemic, the Bayreuth Festspiele has presented every summer, either a full production of the Ring Cycle, or a mix of Wagner's other famous works: Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal, which together are called the "Bayreuth Canon". Only the operas of Wagner are programed and they are usually repeated a few times during the festival, which now lasts from from the end of July to the beginning of September. 

Richard Wagner is arguably one of the most influential composers of the 19th century, whose works inspired many composers and theater producers, too. Though the majority of his works were written for the stage, as opposed for the concert hall, Wagner's music introduced many new ideas of melodic structure, chromatic harmony, and dramatic use of music that were revolutionary in his time. His musical talent led many people to consider him a genius, while others were shocked, and even repulsed, by his overwrought music dramas. Wagner was also a prolific writer and his ideas on music, drama, philosophy, and politics were often very controversial and at odds with established norms. In his personal life he earned a reputation for tempestuous love affairs, shameful financial schemes, and an ego without limit. Yet it was Wagner's boundless imagination as revealed in his fantastic operas that attracted the adoration of millions of people. 

Like with all of his other operas, Richard Wagner wrote his own libretto for the Ring Cycle as well as the music. He wanted the story to be an immersive performance that integrated music and staging to support the drama, what he first conceived as a Gesamtkunstwerk or a total work of art. Later it became known as a Musikdrama or music drama and was intended by Wagner to be an artform that was different from traditional operas of the 18th and early 19th centuries. His first Musikdrama, Das Rheingold, opened in September 1869 at the Bayerische Staatsoper ~ Bavarian State Opera in Munich, followed by Die Walküre in June 1870. The last two works, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were first performed in 1876 at his new theater in Bayreuth.   

This portrait of Richard Wagner comes from a postcard series produced by the Austrian artist, Herman Torggler (1878-1939). I featured another copy of the postcard in my December 2020 story, Hermann Torggler's Great Composers - part 2 which dates from 1912. This one has a postmark of 8 February 1913 and was sent from Ludwigsburg, a city north of Stuttgart and about 150 miles (242 km) from Bayreuth.

Wagner began thinking of a personal theater when his early operas were not received with the respect he felt they deserved. The way opera houses followed certain conventions, like always including one act with ballet, upset him and he desired more artistic control free of obstructive government censors and uncooperative theater directors. 

He was attracted to the city of Bayreuth partly because it was outside the legal limits of the music publishers who owned the rights to his music. He preferred a royalty-free zone, so-to-speak, though Bayreuth had plenty of royal history. In the town there was an old theater called the Margravial Opera House which Wagner thought might be large enough for his operas. It had also been closed for a hundred years.

Margravial Opera House,
Bayreuth, Germany
stage view
Source: Wikimedia

The Margravial was a theatre built in 1744–1748 for Margrave Frederick of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and his wife Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia. It was richly decorated in a high baroque style with gilded ornate carvings and classical paintings. Though the stage was very deep, 27 meters (89 ft), the orchestra platform was visible and not hidden in a pit. It was also too small for the size orchestra Wagner wished to use. The stage proscenium was also too narrow for the special effects that Wagner envisioned and unsuitable for a large chorus or cast. It also only seated 500 people. 

Margravial Opera House,
Bayreuth, Germany
court loge view
Source: Wikimedia

The margrave and his wife were generous patrons of the arts. In 1737 Princess Wilhelmine, who was the eldest sister of the Prussian king Frederick the Great, a celebrated flutist in his own right beside being a king, established her own theatre company in Bayreuth. When their new opera house opened in 1748 the princess put on operas and Singspiele that she composed and even worked as an actor and director. The theater was closed to performance upon her death in 1758 and by the 1860s had been left neglected but persevered. 

When he first saw it Wagner probably instantly recognized that the Margravial Opera was inappropriate for the gigantic operas he imagined. Nonetheless he liked Bayreuth and persuaded  the city's officers to approve his project for a bigger modern theater. It would require a lot of money, but he felt he could finance some of it through concerts as he was also a conductor. His earlier operas had attracted enough popular attention that he could organize Wagner Societies around Germany to raise music for the theater. He even appealed to the German government for funds. It wasn't enough. Yet Wagner knew of one man who had very deep pockets indeed. He would ask Ludwig. 

This postcard has a viewpoint almost identical to my first colorized illustration, but this is an engraving that, I think, must be copied from the same photo taken in Bayreuth's church tower. The caption offers Greetings from Bayreuth and Blick zum Wagnertheater ~ View of Wagner theater. The Festspielhaus is faintly visible below the mountains. This is one of the oldest picture postcards in my collection as the postmark date is 14 September 1898 from Bindlach, a suburb of Bayreuth. 

The city of Bayreuth gave Wagner some undeveloped land on a hillside beyond the city center to build his theater. They probably expected a famous composer like Wagner would bring in a lot of tourists. Wagner also acquired property nearby to build a villa for his wife and their family. He gave it the name Wahnfried and it is now the site of the Richard Wagner Museum. His wife Cosima Wagner (1837–1930) was the daughter of Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and the Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult. She was Wagner's second wife and after his death in 1883 she took charge of managing the festival and safeguarding her husband's legacy.

Wagner "borrowed" several designs from conceptual plans for a theater in Munich that were created in 1864-66 by the great German architect, Gottfried Semper (1803-1879). Semper designed Dresden's opulent opera house which I featured in my story from November 2013, Feuer in der Oper! Fire at the Opera House!. Unlike the seating in most theaters of Wagner's time, here in Bayreuth all the patrons sit on a single steeply angled floor without multiple tiers of box seats and galleries. 

This postcard likely dates from 1911-12 as, even though the postmark is obscured, the 5 pfennig stamp has the years 1886 – 1911 in commemoration of Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria (1821–1912). Luitpold was named regent in 1886 after his nephew King Ludwig II (1845– 1886) was declared mentally incompetent. It was King Ludwig, known as "the Mad King" of Bavaria, who was responsible for building several grandiose castles and extravagant palaces in Bavaria like Neuschwanstein Castle, which inspired Walt Disney's fantasy "castles". Ludwig was also a generous patron of the arts, and  had already been a great benefactor to Richard Wagner. Though he was reluctant to help again, when Wagner asked for support he agreed to finance Wagner's dream of building an opera theater in Bayreuth. 

Three days after Luitpold assumed the regency in June 1886, Ludwig took his own life, and was officially succeeded as King of Bavaria by his younger brother Otto (1848–1916). However since 1873 Otto had been kept in medical confinement after several episodes of severe mental illness and remained isolated for the remainder of his life. His life was just one of several tragic stories from the history of the Bavarian monarchy. Stories that were almost deserving to made into an opera. 

A great many streets of Bayreuth are named after either Wagner's opera titles, or the characters, or celebrated musicians  and conductors connected with his music. From Bayreuth's train station to the Festspielhaus is an almost straight line, little more than a kilometer, to the theater's park along Siegfried-Wagner-Allee, named after Wagner's son. In the short summer season the Festival route can get quite congested though before the age of automobiles it was carriage traffic that caused delays. This postcard was sent from Bayreuth on 24 July 1909 and shows how the Festspielhaus is situated for impressive effect.

The Festspielhaus was built with timber-frame construction and a red and white brick facade with modest ornaments. It seats 1,925 and the structure, including stage and fly-space, has a volume of 10,000 cubic meters. The theater's exterior was recently repaired in 2015. This postcard has a postmark of 2 December 1907 and shows the entrance where patron would alight from their carriages. 

The length of Wagner's music dramas required a lot of stamina from an audience but the intervals (or intermissions in American) between acts were generous and offered a chance for refreshments. During these breaks it became a Bayreuth tradition to announce the resumption of the opera with a fanfare played by the orchestra's brass section. Each call is a short excerpt from the opera of the day. 

This postcard was postmarked 18 August 1909 from Bayreuth and was likely purchased at the festival. It shows 12 members of the trumpet and trombone sections playing a fanfare. The music is printed in a cutout above them and comes from the third act of Götterdämmerung. Here is how it was performed in Bayreuth in August 2017 for Vincent Vargas who seems to have heard several of Wagner's operas that season.

The late 19th century brought significant changes to the instrumentation of an orchestra. For example there was no tuba in Mozart's or Beethoven's orchestras, and most trumpets and horns did not have valves until the 1850s. Generally in the Classical era wind instrumentalists came in pairs and operas rarely needed extra players. But Wagner wanted lots more sound, especially in the bass range. When he insisted that a bassoon should play a low A even though the instrument's lowest note, a B-flat, is a half-step higher, instrument makers devised a longer instrument just for his opera. Today's players make-do with a simple cylinder extension attached to the bassoon's bell that lets them reach that pitch. 

Wagner also called for 8 horns in the Ring Cycle and requires that 4 horn players also double on a small tuba that is now called a Wagner Tuba because he specifically ordered that it to be invented, and in both F and in B-flat flavors, too. Similarly he added a bass trumpet and a contrabass trombone to his orchestra. 

At the beginning of Das Rheingold there is a scene with a great forge, there are a lot of magic rings, swords and spears used in the Ring Cycle, so Wagner requests the percussion section use 18 anvils—nine small, six medium, and three large—all tuned to 3 octaves of F. In the finale he writes parts for six harps to help depict "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla". Typically a production of one of Wagner's music dramas has 90 musicians in the orchestra pit. And in Bayreuth Wagner designed this space for his orchestra with very specific features unlike other theaters.

The orchestra pit in most opera houses puts the musicians on a lowered flat floor in front of the proscenium which is still visible to the audience. But in Bayreuth's Festspielhaus Wagner wanted the orchestra to be hidden and not distract from the drama on stage. He also wanted to control the dynamics of the orchestra by building the pit on a steep slope with several levels descending downward beneath the stage. He then put brass and percussion at the bottom level and violins at the top with the conductor's podium another step higher. This arrangement balanced the acoustics so that the vocalists on stage were not overwhelmed by the orchestra's sound. 

In this postcard dated 17 July 1906 the photographer is on one side of the Festspielhaus pit looking upward to the conductor, Richard's son Siegfried Wagner (1869–1930). Behind him is a curved wall  that covers the strings and over the winds and brass another awning is attached to the stage floor. The result was that the audience could hear but not see the orchestra, and no one, other than the conductor,  in the orchestra pit could see the action on stage. Though the sound was favorable for singers coordinating the timing of the music is a major challenge for a conductor. 

As a young man Wagner's son Siegfried initially considered a career as an architect. But his father's legacy destined him to become a conductor and composer, too.  In 1908, two years after this postcard's date, Siegfried took over as artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival after his mother retired from the position. In 1930 Siegfried died at age 61, just four months after his mother Cosima. His wife Winifred succeeded him in managing the festival.

Here is a short video produced by the Bayreuther Festspiel that shows what Wagner's theater looks and sounds like from the perspective of the pit. It should start at 3:57 which is when the orchestra plays the exciting "Ride of the Valkyries". The beginning is also interesting where one of the horn players explains how his part is played, however it is in German without English translation. 

Jean de Reszke as Siegfried c. 1896
Source: Wikimedia

In Siegfried, the third music drama of the Ring Cycle, Wagner wrote a solo for the horn, my instrument, which is arguably the most famous tune in all of his operas. It is called Siegfrieds Hornruf and it embodies the romantic and heroic ideals that Wagner wanted in his dramatic characters and music. The fanfare is supposedly played by Siegfried in a dark forest as he tries to attract a magic bird. Instead his horn call only awakens the dragon Fafner who Siegfried then slays with his sword. The actual solo is played by a hornist hidden behind the scenery on stage who follows the action of the singer. It's a very exciting tune that takes the horn into its top range. It's always included on auditions and every horn player learns it, though few ever get a chance to play it. 

There are lots of videos on YouTube of someone playing Siegfried's horn call by itself but very few that show a view of how it appears on stage. This short excerpt of the famous Siegfried horn call is the best I could find, though it cuts off just when the dragon's tail appears.  There are no details about the production but the horn call is played by Nobuaki Fukukawa, principal horn of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. 

The Great War caused the Bayreuth Fest to suspend its summer season from 1915 to 1923. But at the outbreak of World War II the festival managed to continue. Doubtless aided by the support from one  particular devotee of Wagner's music.

This photo shows the interior of the Festspielhaus with its open raked seating plan and simple stepped walls without traditional box seats. The stage has a painted backdrop of an Italianate courtyard but all the seats are empty which give the sepia-tone photo a grim forbidding quality.

In the 1930s the reputation of the Bayreuth festival suffered from its connection to Adolf Hitler. From the beginning of his political career Winifred Wagner developed a close personal friendship with him and became a strong supporter of the Nazi party. Before the Great War when Hitler was a young man with artistic ambitions he had lived in Vienna where he was introduced to the music dramas of Richard Wagner. After taking power in 1933 Hitler frequently attended the festival and was known to admire  Wagner's music for its Germanic nationalism. After the war started the Nazi party took control of the festival and for a time subjected wounded soldiers to benefit performances of Wagner's operas with special lectures on Wagner's music and life. The festival was finally closed in 1943 and did not reopen until 1951. Sadly, late in the war the city of Bayreuth was targeted by Allied bombing which destroyed two-thirds of the city including part of Wagner's house, Wahnfried. Fortunately the theater withstood  the attack unharmed.

This card was sent from Bayreuth on 20 July 1943 with an extra souvenir imprint of "Bayreuth the city of Richard Wagner" oddly mirroring the stamp of Adolf Hitler. 

Producing any opera requires an army of workers but the Bayreuth Festival is exceptionally large. Since 1886 it has hired a huge orchestra of over 200 musicians (18 horns in this coming season) made up of the best musicians in Germany and abroad for its summer season. For all the operas there might be as many as 45 vocal soloists in the casts, and the chorus easily numbers over 130. Then there are countless people employed in handling the costumes, makeup, lighting, and sets, not to mention the auxiliary teams that manage tickets, concessions, security, catering, and general maintenance for the festival's theater and park. For this coming summer in 2024 there are 30 performances of eight operas, all by Richard Wagner. Tickets for most of the performances are now sold out. 

Without question Richard Wagner was a singular musical genius. Unlike Niccolò Paganini or Wagner's father-in-law Franz Liszt, his fame was not earned as a virtuoso instrumentalist but only as a composer of musical dramas. And unlike Rossini, Verdi, Gounod, Meyerbeer and other opera composers of his generation, Wagner did not cater to popular tastes but wrote music dramas that pursued higher ideals than mere entertainment. Certainly Wagner the man had many flaws that made him controversial in his own time and which continue to provoke questions about his place in history today. But my interest in collecting postcards of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus was less about Wagner's music than about how it was this theater, built to Wagner's own plans, that made Bayreuth a shrine to his art and life's work. I can think of few composers or artists who have achieved this kind of lasting legacy for their works preserved in a single place.  

Without the Festspielhaus Wagner's greatest music, the Ring Cycle and his last opera Parisfal would likely never have been produced. We should not forget that in the time before film and recorded music the only way to appreciate theater, opera, or music was to witness it live in person. His influence in music and opera theater might have disappeared after his death were it not for the hundreds of thousands of people who came to the Bayreuth festival to watch and listen to this great works. Even now, a century and a half later, Bayreuth remains a pilgrimage site for both devotees of Wagner's music and great performers who aspire to presenting his monumental music in the place he designed.  

-

This last postcard dates from November 1975 and gives a better birds-eye-view (or helicopter view) of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus looking northeast. I suspect the residential area around the theater grounds was more forest and fields in Wagner's time. I imagine that during his theater's construction Wagner surely wandered over this beautiful landscape to gain inspiration for his dramas.  

To finish here is the final scene in Götterdämmerung known as Brünnhilde's Immolation. It is from a Bayreuth production in 1976 directed by Patrice Chéreau with Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde, and Fritz Hübner as Hagen. The conductor was Pierre Boulez. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where sometimes stories
can go on and on

just like grand opera.

The Little Symphony Orchestra of KDKA Radio

 

As formal group photos go, this is a nice but unexceptional image of a small orchestra. Fifteen musicians, all men, are dressed in black-tie tuxedos and closely arranged in a small room. Heavy drapes line the walls and the string players' chairs have fabric slip covers. A large clock hangs at the back and a pair of small palm trees add an odd decorative theme. The orchestra's leader, wearing white-tie and tails, stands center. A caption at the bottom of this postcard reads:

The KDKA Little Symphony Orchestra,  Victor Saudek, Conductor

But hidden within this bland half-tone photo is a remarkable history. This small ensemble was one of the first professional radio orchestras to broadcast music in America, and possibly the world. It was the 1920s, an era when peace had seemingly returned to the world and modern technology introduced mankind to a marvelous new electrical device—radio. For the first time people could listen to the sounds of voices and music that originated in places far away from their homes. Geographic distance was no longer an obstacle. By means of invisible electromagnetic airwaves, anyone with this amazing device could magically receive news reports, sermons, stories, lectures, drama, comedy, and  music. All sounding as live as if they were in your living room.

The postcard was sent on 30 December 1925  to Louis Anna Reinke of Appleton, Wisconsin, roughly 500 air miles west of Pittsburgh.

                        Dear Radio Friend:
                            We were glad to know that you enjoyed
                        our  radio program about which you wrote
                        us recently.  Station KDKA broadcasts a
                        week day program beginning at 6:15 P. M.
                        daily and continuing until the time signals
                        and weather reports are given at 10:00 P. 
                        M. Eastern Standard Time.  Popular mid-
                        night programs are given Tuesdays and
                        Thursdays at 11:00 P. M.  Church services
                        are broadcast each Sunday at 10:45 A. M.,
                        4:45 and 7:45 P. M., with an organ Recital 
                        from Carnegie Music Hall at 4:00 P. M.
                        and a dinner concert at 6:30 P. M.
                            We are always glad to hear from our
                        radio friends, and welcome constructive
                        suggestions.
                                                Sincerely,
                                                        Station KDKA
                        "The Pioneer Broadcasting Station of the World"

One of the first efforts to develop a commercial application for radio communication began with the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This gigantic company was founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse (1846–1914), the inventor of the railway air brake and a pioneer in developing America's AC electrical infrastructure. By the time of his death in 1914 Westinghouse held 361 patents in his name and was responsible for creating 60 companies. However radio was not one of his inventions. In fact, as the result of a bankruptcy reorganization in 1909, Westinghouse had lost control of his company well before it became known for making radios and, later, television sets.

When war started in Europe the Westinghouse Company expanded into building a million rifles for the Imperial Russian army. But in 1917 the revolutionary Bolshevik government canceled the contract and Westinghouse once again faced bankruptcy. Fortunately the U. S. government took up the order as America entered the war and also awarded Westinghouse a lucrative contract to build radio transmitters and receivers for the military.

The first practical radio communication system was developed by Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937), an Italian electrical engineer in the late 1890s and early 1900s. However his invention was intended to compete with transatlantic telegraph cables and used a wireless radio signal to transmit Morse code messages. Converting sound into radio waves was a much more challenging problem that involved countless inventors, engineers, and scientists. Though new concepts for audio radios were evolving when the war began, further advancements were delayed until the war ended.

In 1919 the Westinghouse Company in Pittsburgh was already substantially invested in audio radio research, having bought out the patents of other companies, but it had not yet settled on any commercial use for it. Fortunately the company had one important advantage. It employed Frank Conrad (1874–1941) as an electrical engineer in its Testing Department. It was Conrad's fascination with radio that led him to become one of America's leading pioneer broadcasters. In 1916 Conrad was granted an experimental radio license, callsign 8XK, and he began conducting radio experiments at home in his garage. During the war civilian radio stations were prohibited but Conrad luckily worked in Westinghouse's Pittsburgh factory where radio transmitters and receivers were made. 

In October 1919 the ban on amateur radio signals was lifted and Conrad returned to his experiments, testing new vacuum-tube radiotelephone equipment. On the evening of 17 October 1919 while he was broadcasting to a very small number of amateur radio buffs, he got tired of speaking and decided to play a gramophone record by moving his Victrola's megaphone horn closer to the microphone. The music became such a hit that Conrad was soon overwhelmed with requests for more. He began scheduling specific times every week to play 78 rpm records from his family's collection but that was not enough. He then contacted a local music store for help and they agreed to provide new records in return for his promotion of their store. In addition to broadcasting records Conrad installed a telephone line from his garage to the music room of his house and let his sons and a niece, who were talented musicians, play music live on-air via a telephone. 

Pittsburgh Press
29 September 1920

By the fall of 1920 there was enough enthusiasm for home radio equipment in Pittsburgh that the Joseph Horne department store took notice and began advertising its stock of amateur wireless sets. On 29 September 1920 they included a report about Frank Conrad's popular radio concerts of Victrola music. The word "radio" was still an unfamiliar word to readers, so instead it was called a "wireless telephone".

Radio Broadcast
May 1922
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

Most readers probably paid little notice to the report, but Mr. Harry P. Davis did. He was a vice president of Westinghouse, and he recognized a good business opportunity for the company. If Westinghouse wanted to increase sales of its radio equipment, he decided it should invest in its own radio broadcasting station because as more people enjoyed listening to news and entertainment, the demand for radio sets was certain to grow. Within a few days he ordered a new station to be constructed and Frank Conrad's operation was moved out of his garage. 

The new station, which soon carried the call sign KDKA, was operational in time to report the presidential election results on 2 November 1920. That night Pittsburgh's first radio station joined three other new stations in Detroit, St. Louis, and Buffalo to announce the election of Warren G. Harding hours before the news made the newspapers. It was a hollow honor though, as it was estimated that fewer than 1,000 households in Pittsburgh owned a radio and heard that first audio report. More sets had to be sold and more innovation would be needed to attract the public's attention and create a market for commercial radio.

Radio Broadcasting News
22 January 1922
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

In 1922 the Westinghouse Company began publication of a weekly digest called Radio Broadcasting News that promoted Westinghouse radio sets and its station KDKA. It's banner on the 4th issue in 22 January 1922 claimed it was in its "fifty-seventh week broadcasting". Featured on the cover was a group that I recognized. It was a picture of The Pittsburgh Ladies Orchestra who, by curious coincidence, on  8 January 2022, almost exactly a century later, I featured in a story on this blog. Obviously from their name, this small musical ensemble came from Pittsburgh, so it's no surprise that they would get an invitation to perform on the KDKA studio. 

It was an all-female group, as long as you didn't count the leader and his son, that began in 1911 with programs designed for the Lyceum and Chautauqua festivals. For over a decade they became popular enough to tour the circuits in 19 states. It was led by Albert D. Liefeld and included his wife, Minnie Liefeld on piano, and son, Theodore S. Liefeld on cornet and trap drum set. According to one newspaper report, in 1921 The Pittsburgh Ladies Orchestra was the first "orchestra" to perform live on radio, that being at station KDKA. However with only three string players in a group of eight musicians, it was not really a proper orchestra. The group played KDKA again in July 1922 and continued performing until 1925 after which it stopped appearing in newspaper notices. 

The new studio of  Radio Station KDKA, Pittsburgh, PA
18 December 1922
Source: Wikipedia

As more radio stations opened across the country in the 1920s, many musicians and small ensembles from the vaudeville theaters and Chautauqua circuits found work in radio because the early studios were not equipped to handle large musical groups. The performing space was kept small and well insulated to minimize reverb and distortion of the music. Generally only one microphone was  used and some instruments were left out as being either too loud or too quiet. 

In this picture of station KDKA's new studio in December 1922 we see a woman playing a grand piano while a man, perhaps the announcer or sound engineer, watches. This room replaced the first "studio" which was just a tent erected on the rooftop of the Westinghouse building where programs were sometimes interrupted by the sound of train horns. In this picture yuletide wreaths hang on the drapery walls but the palm trees are the same as in the picture of KDKA's Little Symphony Orchestra. It's interesting that a set of tubular bell chimes are over on the left. The sound of chimes was probably introduced as a convenient way to announce time or a change of program. 

Radio Broadcast
January 1925
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

THE KDKA LITTLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Victor Saudek, Conductor. Seated, left to right: Milton Lomask, Pierre De Backer, Leo Kruczek, violins;
Elmer Hennig, 'cello; Raymond Bandi, viola; James Younger, 'cello; Herbert Saylor, viola; Rest Baker, violin.
Standing, left to right: Stephen Konvalinka, trombone; John J. Harvey, trumpet; William Nugier, drums;
Karl Haney, bass; Victor Saudek, Conductor; Stephen Miller, Jr., piano; Alvin Hauser, flute; S. Sapienza, clarinet

In January 1925 the magazine, Radio Broadcast, included a photo of the KDKA Little Symphony Orchestra that matches the one on my postcard. The magazine printed not only the name of the conductor, Victor Saudek, but also the names and instruments of all the musicians. 

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1879, Victor Saudek  became determined at an early age to play the flute and by age 15 was playing with city's orchestra. After high school he went to Chicago for further musical education and then to New York where he studied flute with a noted teacher and also sang in the National Conservatory chorus under Frank Damrosch. In 1910 he settled in Pittsburgh playing principal flute in the Pittsburgh Symphony and teaching music and the flute at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. 

In 1922, or possibly a year earlier, he was chosen to organize an orchestra to play regular musical interludes for the new radio station KDKA. Most of the first references to musical programs were short pieces by vocalists or solo instrumentalists with piano accompaniment or small chamber groups like a string trio or quartet. The rooftop studio probably did not accommodate many people. 

 

Pittsburgh Press
9 November 1922

In around 1921 the Pittsburgh newspapers began listing radio schedules with programs from both Pittsburgh as well as the other new stations available around the country, though there weren't very many of them then. On 28 October 1922 a report for KDKA listed the "Premier concert by Westinghouse KDKA orchestra" at 8:30 but it did not include Victor Saudek's name and the music program was only for a violin, cello, piano trio and a soprano soloist. The next month there was a more substantial program by "KDKA's recently organized orchestra of 12 pieces, under the baton of Victor Saudek" The music was performed at 3:30 p. m. and included:

• Italians in Algiers ...................... Rossini
• Excerpts from The Blue Kitten ... Frimi
• Solo—To be selected
• Funeral March of a Marionette
  (Comigue) .................................... Gounod
• Scotch Melodies
• Solo—To be selected
• Prelude Siciliana Intermezzo
  Cavalieria Rusticana ................... Moscagni
• March—The Pitt Panther (new) ...Louis Panella

This was very light classical and familiar popular music for the time, clearly arranged for a much smaller instrumentation than what the composers required. After presumably a dinnertime break, the broadcast resumed with news at 7 p. m.; followed by a "bedtime story"; stock market reports; several speakers from the American Red Cross and the Electrical Exposition; then more music provided by a string quartet of KDKA musicians; more speeches; and more music from the Fellows club orchestra. These last bits were likely "phoned in" using a telephone to pick up voices and music from a remote location. Of course, listeners in this early era of radio could not expect the sophisticated sound quality we expect today, a century later. It all just seemed amazing then.

Radio Journal
August 1922
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

E-Z Radio
May 1922
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

KDKA was Westinghouse's primary radio station but by 1925 the company had added three more: WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, (now in New York City); WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts (now Boston); and KYW in Chicago, Illinois (now Philadelphia). The first frequency for KDKA was in the 360-meter spectrum which was shared with other radio stations. In 1923 the U. S. Department of Commerce expanded this range and assigned 920 kHz to KDKA on the Amplitude Modulation (AM) band waves. 

The Westinghouse Radio Broadcasting News encouraged its fans "who are successful in hearing the program from any of the other stations will confer a favor by reporting the circumstances to the Radio Division, Department of Publicity." At this time the nature of how weather and astronomic conditions influenced radio reception was not fully understood and stations relied on distant listeners to measure the range of where the broadcasts could be received.

Science and Invention
(formerly Electrical Experimenter)
June 1922
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

The advance of early radio technology could not have happened without the enthusiasm and experiments of amateur radio hobbyists. The first radio magazines reflect this kind of geeky spirit which did not really have an obvious goal other than basic long distance communication. These magazines are filled with complicated electrical diagrams and lengthy reports on new research or innovations. But it's interesting how quickly music, either live or recorded, became a major incentive for marketing radio as a novel appliance everyone should have in their home. 

Radio Broadcasting News
31 March 1923
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

Ironically for the Westinghouse Company, the early radio sets did not use AC–alternating current which its founder George Westinghouse had established as the American standard for electric service. Instead the sets were powered by bulky batteries that used DC–direct current and had to be regularly recharged. We can only wonder how Thomas Edison, the champion for DC current, might feel vindicated if he could see how the entire world operates on battery power today.  

Frank Conrad gave up his amateur radio license in 1924 but continued working on new designs for Westinghouse's consumer radios. He also did important research on shortwave radio signals demonstrating a method that greatly improved the distance that a transatlantic transmission could be received at a fraction of the previous cost. In 1925 KDKA could even boast of its signal reaching radio sets in Australia and South Africa. For those special long distance international broadcasts Victor Saudek and his musicians had to get up very early, sometimes at 3 and 4 AM.

Radio Journal
August 1922
Source: WorldRadioHistory.com

Within just a few years radio technology rapidly improved and hundreds of new stations started broadcasting all across America. Some countries, like Great Britain, enacted a license fee for radio consumers. But in the United States the airwaves were free, though everyone soon learned that radio programing was more about advertising than anything else. As the radio business model evolved, station KDKA tried to remain on the cutting edge. Victor Saudek was made music director of all four of Westinghouse's radio stations, and though I'm not certain, it seems likely that musicians were employed at each station. What I do know is that by 1927 the KDKA orchestra in Pittsburgh became a bit larger than it was on its first broadcasts. 

In this large 8" x 10" printed photo the KDKA Little Symphony Orchestra sits on a proper concert stage with Victor Saudek standing center on a podium. There are twenty musicians including two horns, two trumpets, trombone, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and percussion in addition to full strings. It's a chamber orchestra that would be suitable for most classical music and theater music. It resembles photos of another radio orchestra that I wrote about in 2011, The Detroit News Orchestra, which was a competitor and contemporary of the KDKA ensemble.

The photo was taken by the Trinity Court Studio of Pittsburgh and marked 1-29-27 in the lower right corner, January 29, 1927. A printed label along the border identifies it as a souvenir gift, "presented to our radio friends through KDKA with compliments of Trinity Court Studio. Like the previous picture the musicians are dressed in formal suits like they might be for a regular performance but, of course, there was no audience inside their studio so why bother with high class fashion? This appears to be a theater stage and not the little KDKA studio so perhaps this was a rare occasion for a proper concert. The palm trees look bigger too.

I haven't yet discovered how long KDKA retained the services of Victor Saudek and his Little Symphony Orchestra musicians. An ensemble like this would be typical of a large theater orchestra used to accompany silent films. But 1927 was the year that Warner Bros. Studios released the The Jazz Singer, the first feature film with sound. Theater orchestras were soon made redundant. And two years later in 1929 Wall Street collapsed and Americans entered a long period of economic depression. Musicians became very expendable and any orchestra, large or small, was surplus to requirements.  

Pittsburgh Press
2 October 1981

In October 1981, the Pittsburgh Press featured a story on Victor Saudek, both father and son. The flutist and conductor, Victor Saudek Sr., was the father of Victor M. Saudek Jr. who never inherited any of his father's musical talents. Instead he pursued an interest in aviation, especially with gliders, and became a mechanical engineer at Hughes Aircraft in California where he helped design airplanes and satellites for NASA. In 1981, Victor Jr., now retired, said his proudest achievement was working on the unmanned lunar spacecraft Surveyor which landed on the moon in 1966. Sadly his father, Victor Sr died just before the landing. "Father couldn't accept the reality of Surveyor going to the moon," said his son.  

His older brother, Robert Saudek (1911–1997) became a noted TV producer and was a vice-president of ABC Television Network in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During his career he was honored with eleven Emmys and seven Peabodys.  He also helped establish both PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

From radio to the moon.
That's a remarkable history of a family and 20th century technology
to hide inside a postcard of a little symphony orchestra.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where no radio license is required

to listen in sepia tone 

Music of the Great White Fleet

 

At first glance this image seems like a scene at any gentlemen's' club from a century ago. A few young men in military uniform are relaxing in a salon or library. There are assorted pictures hanging on a wall, newspapers and magazines on a table, and along the back of the room is an upright piano. Nothing unusual here. 

Except for two things. Their clubroom is not resting on solid ground but is actually afloat inside a battleship. And that piano is no ordinary musical instrument but a complex self-playing piano with a pneumatic mechanism able to reproduce music from cryptic rolls of paper.

These men were junior officers in the U. S. Navy and they had returned from a voyage around the world. And during the trip this player piano gave them a tiny bit of recreation whenever time permitted.

On this postcard we see a long line of the warships steaming through a choppy sea. A caption describes it as the U. S. Battleship fleet leaving Hampton Roads on its "around-the-World Cruise" and according to the back of the card, most, if not all, of them had a military-issued player piano onboard. There were 16 battleships in the fleet and they were all about to sail to South America and then continue westward across the Pacific Ocean to Asia and beyond. It was December 1907 and this expedition promised a peaceful display of naval prestige, as this was a rare time with no eminent threat of war. So someone decided it was appropriate for such a diplomatic mission to include music too. The AUTOPIANO company was ready to help.

Uncle Sam's Choice

   The most severe test to which a player piano can be subjected is aboard a ship, yet the officers and sailors of over 50 U. S. and Foreign Battleships have purchased Autopianos, and unhesitatingly express their appreciation of the enjoyment derived from this wonderful instrument.

   During the famous cruise around the world of the American Fleet nearly every Battleship possessed an "AUTOPIANO" for the amusement and education of the officers and crew.  That these instruments needed little of no repairing after having been exposed to every climate, is more conclusive proof of the remarkable durability of the "AUTOPIANO" and of its ability to give musical enjoyment and great satisfaction under any conditions.  The marvelous Autopiano gives pleasure to every member of the family because all can play it.

            The Autopiano Is Sold By

                 J. N. Adam & Co.
                  Buffalo, N. Y.

   To any one sending name and address of probable purchaser of an AUTOPIANO at the The Autopiano Co., 12th Ave., 51st to 52nd St., New York City, we will send set of postcards of warships carrying Autopianos.

The Autopiano Company of New York arranged for this naval connection to its "marvelous" instrument as a marketing scheme to gain advantage over its player-piano rivals. Dozens of different souvenir postcards of the fleet were printed and used to solicit customers. My first image came from a postcard in this series. It is possibly the only one that shows an interior shiproom and an   Autopiano.

The full picture shows more plumbing pipes and steel rivets than usually found in hotel salons or gentlemen's clubs. The postcard is captioned:

Junior Officers Mess Room
U. S. S. Connecticut
This Autopiano when photographed
on May 12, 1911 had been in use
on this Ship over 4½ Years.

One the back is a full description of the battleship and a testimonial to the Autopiano.

U. S. S. Connecticut (Battleship)

Displacement, tons 16,000.  Speed, knots 19.  Cost, $8,000,000.  Length, 450 feet.  Beam, 76 feet, 10 inches.  Draught, 24 feet, 6 inches.  Main Battery, 4 - 12 inch guns, 8 - 8 inch guns, 12 7-inch guns.  Secondary Battery, 28 Rapid Fire and Machine Guns.  Complement, 856 men.

Uncle Sam's Choice.

   The AUTOPIANO on board the United States Battleship Connecticut, Flagship of the Atlantic Fleet was and still is in the Junior Officers' Mess Room as shown on this interesting picture. 

   This AUTOPIANO when photographed on May 14th, 1911 had been in use for over four and a half years, and that it has more than proved its worth is evidenced by the following letter from one of the Junior Officers:

                                            Napeaque Bay, Long Island,  May 24th, 1911.
Mr. R. W. Lawrence, Pres.,  The Autopiano CO., N. Y.
            Dear Sir:—
                The AUTOPIANO purchased from you which has been in the possession of the Junior Officers' Mess for the past four and a half years, has given excellent service during that time.  It has been used constantly but retains its good action and tone.  Change of temperature and Climate does not seem to affect it.  We are highly pleased with it, and it seems good for many years of service.            Very truly yours,
                    (Signed)   ELMER D. LONGWORTHY,
                                        Midshipman, U. S. Navy.

The Autopiano Is Sold By

E. B. Guild Music Co.

Topeka, Kansas

The U. S. S. Connecticut appears on another postcard in the Autopiano series in a sepia tone illustration. The picture has a copyright 1904 by E. Muller. The Connecticut was built in the Brooklyn NY Navy Yard and was launched on 29 September 1904. Exactly two years later in 1906 it was commissioned and considered the most sophisticated ship in the US Navy.  

Will's Cigarette card,
Famous Inventions No. 23, Auto-Piano
Source: New York Public Library Archive

Like the battleship Connecticut, a player piano was also a marvel of modern technology. The first successful instrument was called the Pianola. Invented in 1896 by Edwin S. Votey, it combined a standard piano with pneumatic actuators that followed a code of perforated holes punched into a long roll of stiff paper. A person "played" it by using their feet to pump pedals attached to bellows, not unlike a parlor reed organ, that pressurized the mechanism. This complicated action was added onto an already complex system for the piano which still functioned even if the player-piano was now used. 

Sectional illustration of player piano interior action,
1909 William Braid White
Source: Wikimedia

Here's a schematic sideview
of the mechanism of a player piano.

1. Pedal.
2. Pedal connection.
3. Exhauster (one only shown).
4. Reservoir; high tension
(low-tension reservoir not shown.)
5. Exhaust trunk.
6. Exhaust tube to motor.
7. Air space above primary valves.
8. Secondary valves.
9. Striking pneumatic.
10. Connection from pneumatic
to action of piano.
11. Piano action.
12. Pneumatic motor.
13. Trackerboard (music roll
passes over trackerboard).

Player-piano music rolls were 11¼ inch wide and were mass produced by several companies that initially followed a standard format for playing only 65 notes. By 1903 one company had a catalog of over 9,000 titles. In 1908 the industry adopted a new standard with 88 notes, the same number of notes as on an ordinary piano. Newer player-pianos like the Autopiano were modified to accept this increased range.

_ _ _ _

The Autopiano Company was just one of hundreds of manufacturers of pianos, reed organs, and player pianos that flourished in America at the turn of the 20th century. The company was based in New York City and began operations in 1903 at a huge factory that had 300,000 square feet of space and occupied two blocks along the Hudson River. Within a short time it was producing 10,000 instruments a year, all player piano types with pneumatic controls. The company quickly established a reputation in the industry for making for a superior product that was robust in any kind of climate, dry or humid. Soon it was exporting Autopianos to music lovers around the globe. 

This postcard illustration gives a fanciful bird's eye-view of the Hudson River in New York.  A caption identifies it as "The Atlantic Battleship Fleet passing the Autopiano Factories."

The card was never posted but on the back there is a message to Edith Lerris (?) from Myrtle Brenner (?). Either Myrtle was only six years old or never mastered penmanship.

A note to
you
dont it
look it.
it is a dish
of honey
and cheese
for you

Even opera divas like Luisa Tetrazzini (1871–1940), pictured on this next postcard, endorsed the "marvelous Autopiano—the piano that anyone can play." Tetrazzini was an Italian coloratura soprano who performed in major opera houses around the world and became one of the highest paid artists of the early 20th century. The Italian-American dish, chicken tetrazzini, was named in her honor.

                                                    San Francisco, Cal.   

        The Autopiano Co., New York, N. Y.

        GENTLEMEN:
   The Autopiano is a blessing to humanity.  It should be in every home, for it brings with it the culture and refinement which only the compositions of the great masters afford.  I find I can play the great operas with the same feeling and expression with which I sing them.  I love to play it—it is wonderful—there is no player piano to equal it.        Faithfully yours,
                                                                    Luisa Tetrazzini

Porch Brothers, Inc.
Johnstown, Pa.

In 1910 Madame Tetrazzini became embroiled in a contract dispute with her manager Oscar Hammerstein who wanted her to perform in New York while she insisted on San Francisco. Her concert fee was also part of the disagreement. During a press conference she declared, "I will sing in San Francisco if I have to sing there in the streets, for I know the streets of San Francisco are free." She prevailed and fulfilled her promise to San Francisco. So on Christmas Eve 1910, on a stage erected in front of the Chronicle newspaper building and accompanied by an orchestra and chorus of 50 singers, Madame Tetrazzini sang for thousands of people. Her concert was especially memorable to San Franciscans because the city was still suffering from the devasting effects of the terrible earthquake of 1906.

This second postcard of the Autopiano factories shows the building lit at night with more battleships using searchlights out in the Hudson River. The caption reads: "The Autopiano factories work over-time to supply the demand for this marvelous Player Piano". I can easily imagine that a few navy midshipmen like Elmer D. Longworthy worked overtime too, acting as Autopiano Co. agents in foreign ports

Grant NE Perkin County News
26 February 1909

In 1906-07 as the Autopiano company began suppling the U. S. Navy with its musical instruments, the navy was preparing its fleet for an historic voyage around the world by order of President Theodore Roosevelt. The fleet consisted of 16 battleships divided into two squadrons, along with various smaller escort and support ships. Eventually the expedition would have 30 ships in all, manned by 14,000 sailors. It was later given the nickname "The Great White Fleet" because the ship hulls were painted white. The U.S.S. Connecticut was the flagship of the fleet and probably got the best paintwork. The expedition began on December 16, 1907 and finished on February 22, 1909. 

U.S.S. Connecticut (BB-18), circa 1906
Source: Wikipedia

The mission of the Great White Fleet was largely diplomatic as the fleet would be paying courtesy calls to ports of many countries. But President Roosevelt also intended it as a display of America's new battleship fleet, demonstrating America's military prowess and naval capabilities as a major power in a world that was dominated by colonial empires. And the United States was the newest nation to join that club.

Map of the voyage of the Great White Fleet, 1907-1909
Source: The Internet

This map shows the route that began and ended in Hampton Roads, the great harbor on the James River between Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Notice that the fleet travelled around Cape Horn in South America as the Panama Canal was still under construction and would not be finished until August 1914. The placenames in red are where the fleet re-coaled the ships. Once it reached San Francisco, the fleet replaced two battleships before continuing across the Pacific. 

As the result of the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the route included stops at the new U. S. territories of Hawaii, Samoa, Guam. and the Philippines. On its return leg the fleet took a short cut from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, rather than going around Africa. The expedition took 14 months and covered 43,000 miles while making calls on twenty ports on six continents.

The U. S. S. Florida (BB-30) was pictured on another Autopiano postcard. Like the postcard of the U. S. S. Connecticut there was information about the ship on the back of the card as well as a promotion of the Autopiano Company by the Orton Bros. music store of Butte, Montana. 

U. S. S. Florida (Battleship)

Displacement, tons 21,825.  Speed, knots 21.  Cost, $6,000,000.  Length, 521 feet, six inches.  Beam, 88 feet, 2 inches.  Draught, 28 feet, 6 inches.  Main Battery, 10 - 12 inch guns, 16 - 5 inch guns.  Secondary Battery, 10 Rapid Fire and Machine Guns.  Complement, 1014 men.

The Florida was larger and more powerful than the Connecticut but it was not launched until May 1910 and was commissioned on 15 September 1911, so this ship was not part of the Great White Fleet of 1907-09. Evidently the Autopiano Company profited by this kind of patriotic advertising and expanded its promotion into the next decade. 

I should also note that many crews of the battleships included a navy band. I've written a story about photos of two of them, including the Florida, in The USS Florida and USS Arkansas Navy Bands. 

The Autopiano battleship series included a picture of the U. S. Battleship Colorado, also known as Armored Cruiser No. 7, which also did not accompany the Great White Fleet in 1907-09. In November 1916 while being overhauled the ship was renamed Pueblo, in order to free up her original name for use by a newer bigger battleship Colorado. This card promoted sales of the Autopiano by a music dealer, J. H. Troup, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 

Likewise this next ship, the Protected Cruiser "New Orleans" (CL-22) was not part of the Great White Fleet either but supposedly still had an Autopiano onboard. It was a much smaller and older ship than the previous battleships. Commissioned in March 1898, the ship was immediately  put to service in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and later was assigned to the Asiatic Fleet in Manila, Philippines. The back of the card offered Autopianos sold by Weiler Bros., of Quincy, Illinois.

The next battleship in the Autopiano series was the U.S. Armored Cruiser New York (ACR-2) which also wasn't a ship in the Great White Fleet. Perhaps this was because of its age as its keel was laid in 1890 and at the time of the 1907-09 expedition the New York was laid up for an extensive refit that was not finished until 1909. Presumably it then got a new Autopiano too.  Maybe purchased from W. H. Rider of Kingston, New York.

Another in the Autopiano series was the Armored Cruiser St. Louis (CA-2) which was launched in 1905 but was already stationed on the west coast in 1907 when the Great White Fleet left on its voyage. The St. Louis was built for $2,740,000 which seems a bargain, especially because a top of the line Autopiano cost $600 then. The recipient of this postcard might have got a better deal from the J. E. Lothrop Piano Co. of Dover, New Hampshire.

Finally I finish with the U. S. Battleship Wisconsin (BB-9) which did join the Great White Fleet in 1908 for the second leg of its voyage when it switched with the U.S.S. Maine in San Francisco. This Illinois-class battleship was launched in November 1898 and commissioned on 4 February 1901. This postcard encouraged music lovers to get a marvelous Autopiano from the Yahrling-Raynar Piano Co. of Youngstown, Ohio.

1912 Pacific Medical Journal

In 1912 the Autopiano company claimed it had instruments on seventy five ships of the U. S. Navy and that 30th regiment U. S. Infantry had taken 20 Autopianos to Alaska. Even the Pope had an Autopiano in the Vatican. (Which brings to mind an odd image of his Holiness sitting on a piano bench vigorously pumping his legs to sing along to the latest music roll, presumably a hymn tune.)

In 1917 the Autopiano Company installed its instruments in over 100 army training camps as America prepared to join the war in Europe. The company was one of the largest producers of musical instruments which were known for being reliable and expressive devices for playing music. But all the player-piano companies were competing against another medium that was rapidly gaining strength. The 78rpm gramophone record.  

In several ways a gramophone/victrola and a player-piano were alike. Both were mechanical marvels that produced music on demand from prerecorded performances. Both used a special media, a disc or a paper roll, that encoded the music invisibly. Both were promoted by famous composers, song writers, and musicians. Both became enormously popular creating a consumer demand that turned music into a consumable commodity which resulted in thousands of new titles produced every week. And as Autopiano advertising boasted, both player-pianos and gramophones required no musical skills and could be played by anyone.

The big differences between the two mediums was that a player-piano like the Autopiano required continuous physical action by a human to play music, while a gramophone needed only minimal effort to crank the motor spring and set down the needle. But more crucial difference was that a gramophone record reproduced the exact sound of voices and instruments while a player-piano just sounded like a like a piano. 

My first experience of music came from a little black and tan RCA 45rpm record player that my mother let me play using a stack of records she must have acquired when she was in high school and college. A few years later my dad got hooked by the hi-fi stereo craze and I discovered jazz, opera, and orchestral music on 32rpm discs. Soon I began buying my own records and still have a large collection though I admit I rarely listen to them. I try not to think about the crypt that stores my collection of cassette tapes since I no longer have a machine that can play them. 

When compact discs first came out in the 1980s everyone was amazed that they were so small and light weight, compact as they say, compared to the heavy albums of vinyl records. Yet today, 40 years after buying my first CD, I've thrown away most of the clunky boxes that they came in and store my CDs in clear plastic envelopes. Unfortunately I can't use them in my car anymore as the "entertainment center" can't play them. Instead I've converted—ripped countless music albums from CDs into digital files on a flash drive. This means that most of the time I don't know the title of a song or the name of the artist performing. How do you turn off random shuffle play? Now even flash-drives are old fashioned. Who needs messy digital files when music can come straight from the Spotify or Apple clouds. 

The average lifespan of the seven battleships used to promote the Autopiano was about 27 years, skewed by the cruiser New York lasting 42 years. Despite their size, or maybe because they were so immense, battleships were not built to last and all these ships ended up being cut up for scrap long before the start of the next war. I wonder if those Autopianos were saved from demolition.

The Autopiano company endeavored to remain independently solvent but in the 1920s it was bought by the Kohler and Campbell piano company. The new owners continued manufacturing player-pianos into the 1930s but like many businesses that depended on consumer demand, it was unable to survive the Great Depression and closed its Autopiano factory forever. Everyone was listening to the radio anyway.

But once upon a time, young navy midshipmen tapped their feet and swung to music on the rolling sea as they sang along to music coming from the marvelous, fantastic Autopiano.  Did the company supply them with enough music-roll titles? How many times did they listen to the same tune on a trip around the world?

 

To demonstrate the sound and machinery of a player-piano
     here is a video of a 1905 Autopiano Player Piano, made of white oak,

that was beautifully restored by the craftsmen at Pianosnthings.
Notice how the little levers under the keyboard control the music
and the foot pedal action almost turns the Autopiano
into some kind of fitness equipment found at a gym. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where music sometimes comes in a sepia box.