Barrel piano
Encyclopedia
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
. Unlike the pneumatic player piano, a barrel piano is usually powered by turning a hand crank, though coin operated models powered by clockwork were used to provide music in establishments such as pubs
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
and café
Café
A café , also spelled cafe, in most countries refers to an establishment which focuses on serving coffee, like an American coffeehouse. In the United States, it may refer to an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches...
s. Barrel pianos were popular with street musicians, who sought novel instruments that were also highly portable. They are frequently confused with barrel organ
Barrel organ
A barrel organ is a mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated...
s, but are quite different instruments.
Operation
The central element of the barrel piano is a wooden barrel covered in strategically placed pins that play the piano when the barrel is turned. The operator uses a hand crank for this purpose, and can control the speed of the music by turning the crank slower or faster. Barrels typically contain a small number of short tunes; therefore, the musical repertoire is limited by the number of barrels one can afford and easily transport.Barrel pianos typically have a range of 40-48 (Non-Chromatic scale) notes, in contrast to standard pianos that normally have 85 or 88 chromatic keys. More elaborate barrel pianos may also include one or more percussion instruments such as bells, wood blocks, small cymbals, tambourines and drums, much like their larger cousin the Piano Orchestrion
Orchestrion
An orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced...
.
History
Barrel pianos were first developed in the early 19th century as an attempt to mechanically automate piano music. They never found their way into homes in any significant quantity, instead being favored by street musicians and other entertainers and as background music in commercial premises. It is believed that in circa 1805 the famous cabinet making family of Hicks in Bristol England turned their attention to the building of musical instruments and are credited with inventing and building the very first street barrel piano in Bristol around this date. So by 1816 the firm of Joseph Hicks was well established as a leading supplier of barrel street pianos and organs. The Hicks pattern of street piano was so popular that other firms copied the design. One of the Hicks family, John had a workshop in London and this may be why sometimes it is believed that the production of barrel pianos originated in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, One of the first prominent German manufacturers was Welte
Welte-Mignon
M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte in 1832.-Overview:...
, originally from Vöhrenbach
Vöhrenbach
Vöhrenbach is a town in the district of Schwarzwald-Baar, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the Breg River, 12 km west of Villingen-Schwenningen....
in the Black Forest
Black Forest
The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
..
Laterna
A variant of the barrel piano became very popular in GreeceGreece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was named laterna or rhombia. It was in the shape of an oversized trunk that could be carried on the player's back with straps and would be propped up on foldable wooden legs. The first laternas were crafted in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
by the Italian Giuseppe Turconi and the Greek Joseph Armaos. Piano parts were mainly used in its assembly and the mechanism included a barrel with nails, which plucked steel pegs which released spring-loaded levers that struck the piano strings and an included bell. The instrument's range was three and a half octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
s. The barrel was turned by a hand crank and was usually big enough to contain nine songs.
Variations
Some manufacturers, such as Favienta of BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, produced barrel pianos with advanced accessories, such as:
- A model that could play the standard six-tune barrels as well as a barrel of three tunes. The three tune barrel had a threaded addition on it and the cylinder moved slowly on its vertical axis as you cranked. At the end of the third tune, the keyframe moved out of the way of the barrel pins, the barrel shifted to the start position, and the first song started over.
- A model that added an electric motor for continuous unassisted playing.
