Gerónimo bless you child

Lief Brunhilda that is if God existed :3

One day I will be on the Tubes and someone will make a snarky religious comment on a totally unrelated video. I have faith this will happen.

Golden Touch * tips fedora *

Thanks

That's a lot of money... but I get your point!

Just one piece played by Bach himself on the organ or harpsichord would be such a treasure. If there were such a thing as an original recording of that, and it were auctioned off by one of the big auction houses, I'm sure it would fetch millions.

We'll never get him bach.

...Bach proceeds to practice his trills 😂

I'm curious about how great musicians played but I would be afraid of being disappointed too. That's what idealizing leads to. Ideals of the past can be beautyfull. (But I would do everything possible to hear Chopin play...)

thanks Chris!

Beethoven too.

i would like to have heard Mozart or Beethoven play the piano; orchestras back then were probably not up to rendering the 9th symphony properly.

It was probably horrible, an absolute mess

Jonathan G awesome post. We are extremely spoiled by modern times. And we tend to idealise older times ( of course) I bet that the music back then was much more raw, not so perfectl in tune and with much more mistakes. But much more “true”

But we also have to take into account that these composers were hailed among the finest pianists of their time. In other words they were also instrumentalists as well as composers and displayed a deeper understanding of the instrument and its intrincasies in order to compose well for them

You can say that again . Hear rachmaninoff play everyine as if hes playing his music. With Kreisler snd in c minor Beeth variations he sounds right. In Chopin he us following his own style andit aint the Chopin of Hofmann or other Russians of the time. Hear Moskowsky recirdinds or Budoni irMedtner and much becomes apparent!

​@@handznet This reminds me off this interesting video about old versus new recordings. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/p6yAipx2s9qye3U.html

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt ... all these guys are known to have been great performers of their own music.

When I first heard Rachmaninoff's own recordings I could not believe how fast he played. This is a topic that this channel has covered in another video!

yes....but you know, I believe (not know) it would be far from what we are used with players today as Lang Lang. Liszt is reported to have had a enormous flexibility in playing, but making quite some mistakes as well. He must have been really impressive in his way of 'speaking' at the piano.

AuthenticSound Yes the first rockstar ever they called him. Wonder how Chopin played

Put it on a Wish Liszt.

Listen to Gyorgy Cziffra play Liszt. Cziffra's playing is probably as close to Liszt's playing as we'll ever get to hear. István Thomán, one of Cziffra's teachers and also one of Liszt's favorite pupils, has said that Cziffra played very similar to how Liszt played.

Just listen to Arcadi Volodos.

This is true to a LIMITED EXTENT. Actually, the bit about old pre-LP audio disc recordings (colloquially termed "78s", although many of them were recorded at speeds OTHER than 78 RPM, and the correct playback speed / pitch needs to be found to correctly transfer each one), is more-or-less correct when talking about CLASSICAL music, where many works were so long in length as to exceed the approximately 3 minute playing time of the average 10" "78". It doesn't necessarily apply to vintage recordings of POPULAR music from the same era. See below. One solution to this problem (limited recording time / space) was to expand the surface of the disc to offer more room for more grooves and thus expanded playing time. This was done even before the 1920s, and Victor, Columbia and other companies came out with 12" records (now termed "12" 78s" by most laypeople and many collectors, to differentiate them from the usual 12" LPs playing at 33 & 1/3 speed, and any other records that are 12" that play at other speeds). These offered about another minute, or minute and a half of playing time, so more music could be put onto them, and finally, more significant parts of large-scale classical works could be committed to disc. Certain makers like Pathe' offered certain rare discs that were even LARGER than 12", with even more playing time, but they are exceedingly rare today, due both to the properties of being more fragile and prone to breakage, the larger the disc diameter, AND due to some of the records being short-lived and only offered for a short time, with maybe only a few hundred (or thousand) copies pressed total. (I'm sure the real hardcore Pathe' collectors out there in the antique phonograph collecting scene, are preserving what few of these huge discs still remain, as well as the more common standard and smaller-diameter Pathe' records. Pathe' were probably the dominant record company in France and some other parts of Europe, and their stuff is very common over there, but in the USA they ran a distant fourth behind the "big three", Edison, Columbia and Victor in the pre-1920 days, and so early American Pathe machines and records are definitely rare). Edison managed to do the same thing (extend playing time) with his own Diamond Disc system, BUT preserve the approximately 10" diameter of the discs. He did this by experimenting (or, instructing his staff to experiment) to come up with a special formula of material for pressing the records, which was able to take and hold, against wear, a microgroove (narrower than the standard groove found on most other lateral or vertical-cut records by most other firms), read (in the Diamond Disc phonographs) by a permanent diamond stylus (rather than the usual steel interchangeable needle found on most other makes of phonograph like Victor and Columbia, which was designed to wear much faster than the record, to preserve the record, and was supposed to be exchanged with a new needle after every two or three plays to prevent it from grinding into the record and THEN starting to really wear the groove down). So, especially with classical music and jazz on Edison Diamond Disc, we get the luxury of that extra minute or so of playing time which helps allow for more of the piece to be recorded. In the case of later jazz band performances on Edison, from the 1920s, this is a luxury in that we are often treated to full-chorus solos from various soloists, instead of the normal abbreviated four-to-eight-bar solos found in so many other jazz recordings of the day. In this sense we get a much more 'real' sense of how the bands must have performed these tunes in the dance halls, vs. the recording studios. I should add that Victor and Columbia did indeed make some popular music 12" records, but they didn't always sell very well, and were certainly not 'pushed' or made in the great numbers of their 10" popular records. This is because popular music records were marketed to more middle-class clientele, who were expected to have less money, and of course the larger records always cost a little more money. The classical music records were 'pushed' to EVERYBODY, rich and poor, but it was naturally assumed wealthier people would gravitate towards them more frequently and reliably, and so cost wasn't considered so much of an issue vs playing time (with playing time being correctly recognized as paramount in importance to all involved, including the musicians themselves), and the more well-to-do record companies could also afford to hire big-name stars such as from the Metropolitan Opera to make records, which the small companies simply couldn't afford to do. This is the situation as best as I understand it. I invite record-collector, phonograph-collector, and recording-historian friends to PLEASE chime in and take what I have written here and refine it and correct errors, as I'm really a mechanical-music and acoustic keyboard guy, I only dabble a little bit in antique phonographs and records, to the extent of it helping my hobby of collecting vintage popular piano recordings from the old days to study as a ragtime pianist/scholar. As an example I only have about 5 or 6 phonographs in my collection, and maybe a few hundred "keeper" records (vs many others for sale), vs. about 24 or so "keeper" pianos in my piano / player piano collection (with more to get), plus reed organs, pipe organs, thousands of music rolls, some trade literature, etc. etc. accurately reflecting that hobby being my primary focus. One GREAT online resource to start to learn about old recordings, with some extremely fascinating and never-before-published interviews, etc in their 'blog' section, is here: mainspringpress.com/

OOPS, I forgot my "see below" in all that I wrote below! OK, for the "see below": As best as I can determine based upon listening, interviews with numerous popular/ragtime/jazz musicians who made recordings (and LISTENED to their recordings play back during some interviews, with comments), once a vintage popular music recording is played back at the correct speed, for correct tempo and pitch, which MAY be somewhere in the vicinity of 78 RPM, but sometimes slower or faster, depending upon the company who recorded it, and how their recorders were running that day, then I would pretty much guarantee you are listening to the piece at an "authentic tempo", i. e. how the PERFORMER intended to perform it, that day in the studio, and not especially fast for recording constraints. Your point about limited playing time causing some performers to take tempos on the quick side, to 'cram the whole piece/movement on the record' is definitely true regarding SOME _classical_ works. This theory 'doesn't fly' with most popular music, as, once you immerse yourself enough in the field of old records, you realize that pop records were NOT just for listening, but ALSO FOR DANCING. They were extensively advertised as such by every record company. Not every pop record was for dancing, but I guarantee the lion's share of instrumental pop records (non vocal) WERE. Many of them are even so labeled on the label: "for dancing". Also, most popular instrumental and song compositions were much shorter in length than many classical works (classical musicians refer to short classical works, possibly condescendingly, as "miniatures"), and so it is much easier to cram them on one side of a normal 10" "78", often WITH ENOUGH ROOM LEFTOVER AFTER PLAYING THE ENTIRE TUNE AT A NORMAL TEMPO, TO GO BACK TO THE TOP AND REPEAT AS MUCH AS THE TUNE WILL FIT ON THE RECORD, TO FILL UP THE ENTIRE PLAYING TIME OF THE RECORD. I'm sorry for shouting, but if you listen to a vintage recording of a given popular piece, following along with the published score (piano solo, piano-vocal, or band or orchestra score), you will note that what I mention very frequently occurred, where at "normal" dance tempo (fast by some people's standards today), the entire piece could frequently be played in its entirety, sometimes with all repeats (!!!) AND then "da capoed" and repeated AGAIN after the piece had been played through to the end. This is quite common, on, for example, early ragtime records made by concert bands, banjo soloists with band, orchestra or piano accompaniment, etc etc. VOCAL pop records were another story, as vocalists frequently took many songs SLOWER than what would be their equivalent dance tempo. This is illustrated perfectly by hearing the same 'house' orchestra or band play the same pop song at ONE (fairly brisk) tempo on an instrumental dance record, and the same tune at ANOTHER tempo (frequently slower, and frequently with more rubato, not a steady dance tempo) for singing, when backing either a studio singer or a guest vaudeville star singer. Once piano rolls became thoroughly entrenched in culture and commonplace in households and saloons/restaurants as home and commercial entertainment, home rolls (where you set the tempo yourself, as opposed to most American commercial automatic instruments where the tempo is either fixed, or only variable in a narrow range), frequently have TWO suggested tempo markings on them for playback on one's player piano: a slower one "for singing", and a faster one "for dancing". Of course, rolls of instrumental music only usually have one suggested tempo marked at the beginning of the roll, and again I'm talking about popular music. Classical music rolls are another story. Bands, Orchestras etc (most of which were "house groups" of studio musicians in the early days, with relatively few outside guest bands or orchestras, unfortunately), had to play tunes like marches, waltzes, rags, fox-trots, schottisches, two-steps, polkas, mazurkas etc etc at NORMAL DANCE TEMPOS like they were being played live for dancers at that time, OR ELSE PEOPLE COULD NOT DANCE TO THEM AT HOME, since dancing to the phonograph at home was, believe it or not, fairly common 100 years ago. Social dancing was once far more popular than it is today, especially what is now called "ballroom dancing" (but then was just called "dancing" I believe), and it being an important part of society, was a large reason why so many short popular instrument pieces were originally composed, to be played by instrumentalists (small orchestras, string bands, pianists, etc etc) for _dancing_. Of course, people would usually prefer to go out to a dance hall and dance THERE to a live orchestra, but not everyone could either afford to do so, or lived in a large enough city to have a dance hall nearby, or had the time to get away with their work schedule. So dancing to the phonograph or player piano at home (or to live music made by members of the family, and friends/neighbors) was a nice substitute that still kept people happy. It keeps US happy today in knowing that many of these recorded tempos are correct for dancing, or in the realm of 'correct', although of course not every single piece is taken at a tempo the original composer may have intended when they first composed it. I should add that with popular music, most composers were much less choosy about how they wanted their pieces interpreted, as popular music was not classed nor treated the same as classical music, and nearly all pop composers resigned themselves to the fact that individual musicians (even on the stage, in vaudeville) would both choose their own tempi for pieces, and also put on their own variations / play in their own arrangements / in a few cases improvise extensively on them. So long as the composers were getting PAID for usage of their works / recording royalties / performing rights, they didn't worry so much about this, as this was extremely normal in the pop music business (as it is today), unless someone was out of order and was REALLY massacring their beloved tune. Also, in those days, the pop composer didn't usually have nearly as much power/clout as did their PUBLISHER, who frequently owned either the piece outright, or was getting a large chunk of the royalites for it. So the composers not only were frequently beholden to the whims of their publisher in order to allow / disallow who would get to perform the tune (in vaudeville, on recordings etc), but also, many of their pop songs, instrumentals etc were written on commission, or on speculation, for a publisher (or sometimes 'shopped around' to different publishers), with the hopes that they would be widespread enough in appeal to be picked up and promoted by many different artists (naturally, in different styles and tempi) and make some good money (as well as making people happy). This is almost the opposite of the way that classical music has come to be composed now: more as art-music than 'on commission' (although commissions are still done today by many concert-music composers). Also, classical composers are usually (not always, but usually) much more sticklers about 'sticking to the score' and wanting their music played as written, and also about proper/consistent tempos etc. So, Scott Joplin, James Scott, Artie Matthews, and Paul Pratt being art-music composers writing in a popular format, were really exceptions to the rule more exemplified by successful pop composers of the Harry von Tilzer, Jean Schwartz, Abe Olman, Turner Layton etc variety. I am not making a qualitative judgement here as I love all these composers, but remarking upon a difference in KNOWN INTENT where the first four composers were known to be very particular about how they wanted their music played, and very precise in notating it, a major exception to the rule. My favorite story relating to the latter is in the absolutely wonderful interviews with "Gus" Haenschen, done by James A. Drake, on the Mainspring Press blog. Mr. Haenschen, accomplished pianist, composer, and especially conductor and director of the Brunswick records popular music department in the 1920s, recalls about the famous singer Al Jolson using his fame/power as a weapon to discourage other conductors etc from trying to get him to sing tunes any other way than he wanted to sing them. One of the ONLY exceptions where someone else got him to sing any other way was the famous Irving Berlin. Said Mr. Haenschen: "Being the biggest star in show business, Al could even get away with chewing out some of the big-name songwriters. He would tell Gershwin in Yiddish to go to hell for making any suggestion about how a song like “Swanee” should be sung. But there was one he never argued with: Irving Berlin. When you listen to Jolson’s [Brunswick] recording of Berlin’s song “Remember,” you’ll hear Jolson sing it that way it was written. That was because Berlin had told him bluntly that he had written this song for the woman he loved-Ellin Mackay, whom he married-and that if he heard one hint of a “Mammy-ism” on Jolson’s [Brunswick] record, hell would freeze over before he would give Jolson another song. As you can hear on the record, Jolson sang “Remember” exactly as he was told to sing it by Irving Berlin himself. I liked that record because it showed that Jolson could sing beautifully when he wanted to."

Thanks! This might be a nice follow-vid for you: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aN-Uaq-Izprbpac.html

Great !

I think you're definitely right about skimming over the articulation and ornaments as well as the tempo. I almost feel like the argument over tempo in historical performance is pedantic at best and at worst can get in the way of artistic expression. We have to remember at a certain point that a composer is a human being just like we all are and they had preferences just like we do. I think composers appreciate it most if his pieces were played in a way that sounds good and in a way that the audience and the musicians enjoy it above anything else.

@@mackenlyparmelee5440 Quite true. Your last sentence, though, opens too much room for "arbitrariness" for me. I think that, while there are infinitely many "correct" ways of interpreting a piece, there are also ways that are definitely wrong, even if they sound good and enjoyable; e.g., when something goes against the text the composer wrote explicitly. A couple of years ago, I wrote something about this in my blog: clavicen.blogspot.com/2013/03/can-interpretation-be-both-subjective.html

@@WilfriedHLingenberg Why do we not have the right to go against the text the composer wrote explicitly if we judge that doing so will produce a good result?

@@4grammaton You certainly have the right to do so, but it would then be not the composer's piece anymore but your own (which may or may not be better than the original).

EXACTLY :)

Thanks David!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for watching, Brian!

Thanks!

Thanks for watching Paul!

I hope to have convinced you I'm never finger pointing at anyone, but am fascinated by reflecting on the matter and experimenting!

I think there are many different possibilities to reach the goal of a historical correct way to play pieces. The best way to get answers is to look after some letters of a composer about a piece or to look after the music treatises of music theorists of the time you want something to know (Glarean, Praetorius, ...). You should also ask if our music instruments soubd like the instruments of the time. There are many questions you have to ask. A answer to a question like "how to play a piece of music historically correctly" isn't really possible. In my opinion nobody can play a piece of music as it was played in its time because the way we play it is a nowadays interpretation of something which is a long time ago. Nobody can play a piece of music exact the same way as he did before, every performance is different. So to answer the question no we can't ever play the way they did it in the past, we are children of our time and not of a time which is even a generation ago.

This depends on the composer's intentions.. for Bach I would agree, for Chopin I would not agree, for example

I agree. I have heard recording of Rachmaninov playing his own pieces on piano. Nevermind the poor sound quality, I felt that he played them too fast. How about that? I am a critic of Rachmaninov's piano technique!

Agreed. Everyone has their own interpretation when it comes to performing a piece.

Yes yes yes! I'd like to know more about his ornamentations and tempi, because I believe (fear) the modern cembalo players exaggerate it all, just like in piano music. Sad that Scarlatti and his companions didn't know the metronome!

o yes....

Are you talking about reproducing pianos and reproducing piano rolls? Perhaps the article is the excellent one on the British Pianola Institute website. If you click the links near the top of the article and on the left sidebar, you will be taken to different pages to learn about the different systems and pianists who recorded for them: www.pianola.org/reproducing/reproducing.cfm

In my piano collection I currently have three reproducing pianos with two more on the way: a 5' 8" Chickering Ampico A grand; a 6' (approx.) Ronisch-Hupfeld Triphonola combination electric and foot-pumped reproducing grand (also can play player piano rolls including Themodist rolls) and a small and cheap but rare Brinkerhoff baby grand (about 4' long) made by Schulz in Chicago with their Aria Divina (Recordo) expression system in it. On the way are two more reproducing pianos, an upright and a grand Art Echo, each marked "Apollo" so possibly a Wurlitzer product, but equally likely the work of Adam Schaaf of Chicago, possibly using the Apollo name under license. Reproducing pianos now can be bought for peanuts on venues like Craigslist, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, etc as well as through auction houses. I think that is too bad as they are well made and originally sold for prices approaching (or in some cases surpassing) the cost of a brand new car! The extra automatic expression devices, coupled with the prestige of certain brands / names (also reflected in their build quality) meant that the average reproducing piano was marketed to a more 'upper crust' clientele than the average foot-pumped player piano. Until the bottom dropped out of the market about 15 years ago, they still held their value reasonably well. I credit part of that (not the obvious economy part) to the lack of currently-available new reproducing piano rolls with newer music from the last 40 years. The last commercially-issued reproducing pop rolls really came out in 1941, although there have been a few other 'newer tunes' specially arranged for reproducing pianos and produced in limited batches for collectors in the 1970s etc. If more new music were arranged for these pianos (and it can be easily accomplished using MIDI arranging software to create the roll master), fewer of them would be headed for the dump. However, commercially-available recordings of 'reproducing pianos behaving badly' (not playing well, not properly adjusted) coupled with un-musically-knowledgeable talk from non-musician aficionados parroting the sales pitches of century-old reproducing piano advertisements, have not helped make these instruments desirable or 'legitimate' in the eyes of many classical music lovers. However, the more enlightened of the player piano partisans understand there IS a music truth to many of the reproducing piano rolls (an arranged, mathematical truth to be sure, but still a truth) and that they are still worthwhile getting and worthwhile hearing, if not exactly the same as an audio recording. Also, they often make great musical instruments to play by hand.

I do believe so

It still is today for everybody playing around with MIDI sequencing for the first time, I guess. I did programm music on computers for 20 years and still let them play fast complex patterns and huge chord voicings for my entertainment all the time. It's like having a pocket orchestra.

and an additional 30 seconds to share your annoyance with the world :-). Thanks for the 2 minutes anyway!

Thanks Hudson!

Thanks for watching!

Great to read, thank you!

Good points! Indeed a portion of the classical works is playable according to the metronome numbers that came to us. The majority of the fast movements however not. Moreover, in relation ship to the 18th century understanding of the tempo ordinario, tempi like these seem to have no relation ship with that either. I have made several videos on the topic, perhaps this one is a good one to start with: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aN-Uaq-Izprbpac.html&list=PLackZ_5a6IWVP1Nb_Zxr-RfFHX62Nz9iQ

Hi Abigail, thanks for watching! My guess is as the restorer said, it was a fancy machine that was meant to play way faster than humans did, so intended for the clock, but probably not as the music would be played

Thanks Kanye!

Then we'll travel back together ! Yes, and certainly if he would have become Dom organist, writing cantates, ... o boy...and next is Schubert....

Chopin...

Don’t forget about Purcell

His work was done, history has spoken..'amor fati' is part of the exprerience

If Mozart had lived, he would have been overshadowed by the up-and-coming Beethoven.

you're welcome!

Me too... it's fascinating that they have these machines. I have a grandfather clock that is actually not a quartz mechanism. It plays something every 25 minutes. like a music box .. very cool...very cool...

Great to read, Ben!!

AuthenticSound yeah

Chopin would be my number one too, veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery close to Mozart and Bach. Mendelssohn...

Strange thing is, it seems to be twice too fast (as many of those clocks are)

This is certainly an organ. It has a single rank of flute pipes, which are hidden from view. I have not seen this particular organ in person, and only have maybe one or two photos of it in my mechanical-music literature collection, so am not sure whether the pipes are wooden or metal, nor whether they're open or stopped pipes, but they are certainly, in working principle, organ pipes like in a regular hand-played pipe organ. However, they are of limited compass and I'm not sure whether the scale of this organ is chromatic or not. It was extremely common for barrel organ scales to NOT be fully chromatic, but be missing certain pitches in the scale, in order to allow the instrument to be made fairly compact, and still have a wide breadth of musical compass from bass to treble. This was particularly so in very small organs like found in 'flute clocks' popular at the time (for which even Mozart composed a few pieces), and in serinettes (high-pitched bird-trainer organs), some of which are entirely diatonic with no accidentals at all. However, early 'presentation piece' organs like this, and other instruments intended for the performance of 'serious music' such as orchestrions, tended to be made more chromatic than the average church-hymn-type indoor, or hand-cranked street outdoor, barrel organ, so that they could more successfully play the more complicated and serious musical pieces they were intended to play. I presume you haven't heard much in the way of regular hand-played pipe organs, and your idea of an 'organ' sound is a typical church organ playing 'full organ' with all ranks 'turned on' including mixtures etc, like the typical 'pipe organ' sound found on many synthesizers, electronic keyboards etc. This very small pipe organ does not have a great many ranks of pipes (I think it might only have one rank), and so of course that type of 'full organ' sound is not possible with it, but neither is it possible with many smaller hand-played church (or theatre) organs of only a few ranks of pipes. That kind of stereotypical 'full organ' tone is also not possible with tiny portable hand-played organs called 'portatives', which nonetheless, are still, real, human played musical instruments, the oldest ones dating back to medieval times. If you look THOSE organs (portatives) up on KZfaq, you'll see that their small, limited compass single rank of pipes is more akin to what we hear here, with a very basic flute or diapason tone, than are the larger non-portable organs with many ranks of pipes found in churches etc. Also, when you just use one or two ranks of even a large or very large pipe organ, and play just a few notes at a time in a lighter texture, you can still approximate this same kind of tone even with a very large organ. Too many people see a large pipe organ and incorrectly assume it has to be, or can only be, played loud all of the time. If that were true, it would not be a musical instrument, but would be a waste of materials, resources, and people's time. The truth is that pipe organs can produce a great variety of dynamics, sonic effects, etc through their many different stops and voices. The larger the organ, the more different stops / voices are available and the greater VARIETY of tone colors possible. It isn't always just about being LOUD. Please do go and listen to some great pipe organists online and you'll probably be amazed at what a pipe organ can do, and the variety of sounds and dynamics possible. I hope this helps.

eh...no.

yes, sheet music is a recording of music. Why would you think otherwise? it's not a record of the audio of a particular performance, but of the music notes, rhythms, accents, articulations and so on

@@VRnamek Your argument is specious and misleading. No one, hearing the term in any other context than the one you specify, would understand it thus-and most would feel offended at having been intentionally deceived. There is a reason why there is a difference between a "recording" of a conversation versus a "transcript" of one. No one is served well by a blurring of that line.

Then by that logic, vinyl discs aren't recordings, they're pieces of plastics. Wav and mp3 aren't either, they're electronic data.

@@gaminawulfsdottir3253 anything recorded is a recording - it's not specific for audio. Human history began by recording crude paintings on rock, script markings on clay... recording tech keeps evolving and we can record more and more different data. No doubt one days there will be actually human memory recordings, so you can play back yourself to not only listen to a piece of music, but listen to it as the memory donor listened to it and feel it like they did.

I'm about to write same in my stand-alone comment, but you beat me to it. Yes, exactly, many of these VERY EARLY mechanical organs, made pre-1800 in days before mass production and mass marketing of mechanical instruments, were made as curiosities and playthings of the wealthy, and were mostly or totally unknown in the homes and places of lower class and lower income people, as well as not being commonly used in public. (Just to clarify and offer more detail, in addition to the very expensive and exquisite musical 'presentation piece' barrel organs such as this, a tradition dating back at least to the 1500s, there were ALSO a relatively few very early outdoor hand-cranked street barrel organs heard in public by the early 1700s, as well as some indoor small barrel organs playing hymns for small churches etc, as well as serinettes used for training birds to sing. However, these were just starting to be built in any kind of big way in the 1700s, and the barrel organ as such did not really become commercialized, as we think of it, until the 1800s. Any barrel organ is rare today and the rarest of them were usually built before 1800, and it is extremely unusual to find such an early barrel organ outside of a museum today. Most barrel organs extant today, were mass-produced in the 1820s-1930s period, with probably the majority extant being built after about 1860 or so. And, by barrel organ, I mean literally one playing from PINNED CYLINDERS). So, by being essentially a novelty and a toy (NOT to detract from the fine craftsmanship or serious intent of the original builder and music arranger!!!), they were probably not taken very seriously by classical composers, BUT regarded more as, besides a novelty, as an early means to play music in such a way that it COULD NOT be played (physically) by the human musicians of the day. This is in contrast to the mass-produced mechanical instruments of the later period, which were expected / required to play arrangements more in line with the way people actually played them (at least, the tempos), so as to substitute for a human orchestra / band / piano in public places that could otherwise not afford one, in the days before amplified music. In the same manner, the player piano in the home was intended to play the piano for people who could not play it themselves, in that case, in direct simultaneous competition with the (acoustic) phonograph, but without the phonograph seriously challenging the player piano in the reproduction of piano music UNTIL the introduction of electrically-recorded and amplified recordings around 1925 (which did indeed kill the player piano market). So if the museum's research / state of the existing instrument, does all point to this being the correct playback speed for this piece due to known existing constraints of the length of the blades of the governor / fly fan, the gearing ratios and original spring strength, and original diameter of the cylinder being correct, then most likely, Hadyn, with his well-known sense of humor, approved of it in the sense that he was OK with THIS ORGAN playing THIS PIECE of his (not necessarily 'just any' of his pieces), THIS FAST, as a novelty. He may have actually (I'm *theorizing*) specifically chosen this movement of this piece because he himself was curious what it would sound like "played faster than humanly possible" and/or because the Prince himself was curious of this. I doubt either the Prince or Haydn would have picked / allowed another Hadyn piece, considered more 'sacrosanct' and less amenable to "monkeying-with", to be so programmed for such an organ, due, presumably, to their musical taste and propriety. So, in this case, we would need to look PAST the tempo which might be seen as humorous, and then, through our new OBLIQUE rather than DIRECT musical perspective of this mechanical 'performance', then pay attention to OTHER amazing things that this organ tells us about what was considered acceptable to the builder, arranger, composer, and eventual customer for this organ, like the PIPE VOICING, AIR PRESSURE / VOLUME, and the ARTICULATION AND PHRASING which is very obviously present to a great degree in the musical arrangement on this cylinder. So to recap, It may go super-fast, but the arranger still gave a damn about making it go fast and then STILL play the tune IN WHAT WAS THEN CONSIDERED A MUSICAL WAY (in terms of the phrasing), and to me, for this particular organ, THAT is where the great magic and time-machine effect REALLY is!!!

Thanks Fred!

Searching online, I came across this wonderful article about Dietrich Nicklaus Winkel and his creations. It's in Dutch, but if you don't read Dutch, it can easily be translated via Google translate: www.pianola.nl/Pianola_Museum/Dietrich_Nikolaus_Winkel.html In this article is a nice interior view of the organ known as "de freule" or "the Lady" which is the organ to which I refer. It was built in 1819 and owned by the Six family in Amsterdam for a long time, who donated it to the museum decades ago. If it is the same organ mentioned in an 1863 sale ad as being built by Winkel and owned by the Six family, then it originally had 11 cylinders and a mahogany case, of which (if it is the same instrument) 5 cylinders and the case must now be lost, as there are 6 cylinders with it now. Here is the interior photo of this organ, showing the beautifully simple mechanism: www.pianola.nl/Pianola_Museum/Dietrich_Nikolaus_Winkel_files/resolve-2.jpg

Another Winkel organ, this one more of a small orchestrion, also exists in the same museum and is the last known surviving instrument by him, as he died the same year it was built (1826). It plays, in this video, a PHENOMENAL set of variations by Herz, with lots of register changes for orchestral effects, lots of rubato (all programmed in by the arranger for the constant-speed cylinder), and great phrasing. One striking thing is not only how supernaturally fast the fast parts are, but how SLOW the slow parts are! The somber / funereal part about 1/3 of the way through (or halfway through?) where the reed pipes take the melody line, goes extraordinarily slowly compared with the rest of it, and I am temped to make a crack about how, were the entire cylinder speed slowed to make the fastest parts 'realistic', this slow part would be so slow as to make the melody incomprehensible! Anyway, I'm blown away by the tone and effects of this little organ, and the arrangement, and hopefully you will be, too. The organ does not have bells; the dinging you hear at the end, unrelated to the music, is one of the Museum's numerous carillon-clocks or bell-playing clocks striking the hour and then playing a tune on the bells, in an adjacent room: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hNeemttnp5banWQ.html

Es como reproducir una partitura traducida de una performance de ricther en un reproductor MIDI

Hi Leigh, They were fantastic musicians, but no gods, and technically for sure not superior than we, that's simply not possible, it would require a genetic different body system, which, in 2 centuries is not possible to evolve (it would be the only decrease in life quality of a specimen btw). They just played slower, in the 18th century tradition, it is that simple

:-)

the cilinder was, they replaced it

thanks for pointing me to this... wish English would be my second native language...

I was not criticising your English skills but rather make a joking remark about you saying several times: let's dive into it. So, we dove (past tense) into it ;)

FlaneurSolitaire looked him up, interesting composer!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

thanks for sharing this here!

Thanks for watching and the nice words, really appreciated!

Leonardo Rivera Mendoza by

The passage in question the roughly 2 minutes into the Barcarolle track.

It is to wonder indeed how much of the piano rolls are giving a genuine reproduction of what has been played. It is known that the original rolls were copied and mistakes were taken out by engineers, but many of the resulting tempi have the same problems as metronome marks, they seem to go beyond a certain human threshold. Today many see it as facts, as proof of how super-human these pianists were, but one should always realize that if we cannot do it, they couldn't either. So what happened? it is a really important piece of the research we currently do not have the time for to dive into, but it should be done.

The device is, the core point of the video is that these very fast performances were not a representation of the way of playing

I have read that part of the novelty of these so-called 'flute clocks' or 'flotenwerke' was indeed that they could play things faster than any human, while remaining accurate in the phrasing, meter etc. This was particularly true for early instruments that were automatic (not hand cranked) and built as, essentially expensive toys, presentation pieces or 'conversation pieces' for wealthy customers. That again should not downgrade their status as being able to reproduce, live, note-for-note the same performance they used to amuse and amaze visitors and guests 300 years ago, but they should indeed be put into context as what, musically, they represented to people in the original day. I would think that if the serious composers then, knew that there would be such a dispute 200+ years later as to how to play their compositions, and that these type of mechanical instruments would be given such importance as 'clues', they themselves would have taken upon them to either personally mark the cylinders, or else help commission larger or more elaborate instruments on which to leave some permanent record of their music etc. etc. instead of pooh-poohing the idea and viewing composing for such instruments as a "chore" or a "paycheck". But- I doubt that most of these great composers truly thought their music would outlive them by very long... certainly not by this long. They would be shocked and amazed that people still talk about them and are playing their music (however rightly or wrongly) today. It is interesting the chances that some composers had to so document their works. Beethoven grumbled about his task of composing "Wellington's Victory" for "The Panharmonicon", a very early orchestrion built or commissioned around 1810 by Maelzel, the purported inventor of the metronome (who actually stole that invention from Dietrich Nicklaus Winkel, mentioned in another comment). Maelzel was apparently indeed a crook who then (after the score was finished and marked on the cylinder for the orchestrion) tried to make off with Beethoven's score, either without paying him, or without giving him royalties, or credit, or something like that, and Beethoven was furious, taking his score back, changing the title etc. etc. I think it did get pinned on the cylinder for the Panharmonicon though, along with other cylinders of other music by other composers. That actual instrument with some cylinders (not sure whether *that* one) did survive up through about 1944 in the Industrial Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, where it was destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII. All that survive are the several music cylinders for it. I'm not sure whether "Wellington's Victory" is on one of those cylinders. Without at least the key frame remaining for the orchestrion with the scale and functions marked for each track, it will be a very hard task to get any music off of those cylinders, but people shouldn't give up. Fortunately, there are at least two old black-and-white photos of the inside of the Panharmonicon, taken before it was bombed out of existence, showing a little bit of the internal layout and instrumentation. Hopefully these will help in at least trying to start to decipher the scale.