The Archive of Recorded Sound (ARS) at Stanford University Libraries holds a major collection of perforated paper rolls for mechanical player pianos — otherwise known as piano rolls. 

During their heyday around the turn of the twentieth century, player pianos spanned the globe and brought music into all kinds of homes and establishments. The rolls contained the data that brought the instruments to life. There were rolls geared to the tastes of immigrant communities; rolls turning out the latest hits; rolls documenting artists in emerging, soon-to-be hugely influential genres like ragtime and stride piano; and rolls with works by composers like Chopin and Liszt, performed by the great classical pianists of the era, and sometimes even performed by the composers themselves.

After the invention of sound recording and the popular embrace of phonographs and commercially recorded discs, the performances captured on the rolls faded from public memory. But rolls didn't die out altogether — in fact, they were manufactured throughout the twentieth century. Communities of roll enthusiasts recognized the rolls’ cultural value and continued to seek them out. Private individuals maintained magnificent roll collections, held concerts, created forums to exchange information, and developed innovative methods for generating sound recordings from digital scans of the rolls.

Stanford has benefited from the expertise of this community and developed a formal program to preserve piano rolls digitally while making them widely accessible once again for research and enjoyment. This online exhibit provides digital access to a subset of Stanford’s roll collection via image files (full-color and monochrome), MIDI files, and audio files.

Piano rolls offer an aural window into an earlier era. We invite you to use this exhibit to search, browse, and explore the piano rolls in the collection; learn about the research conducted at Stanford on player pianos and rolls; and delve into the significance of piano rolls for the study of historical performance practice.

For more informations, please visit:

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/supra

All related content is released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license.