Part 17:  Finally Everyone Could Have Their Own Phantom Of The Opera!

Welcome to part 17!

Last installment we explored the strange portable world of the Organette, today we’re going to find all about one of it’s bigger siblings, the Player Organ.

As the table top Organettes had become popular enough to become established, people started to discover their faults.

Most had an average range of fourteen notes, once the composer you used the notes for the melody there were normally only enough notes left for are very basic accompaniment.

As the richer folk had already been investing in barrel mounted flute organs for a while it was a natural evolution for the roller operated organ to be produced.

Even though historically the player Organ developed roughly in tandem with Organettes, they were aimed at a richer more musically discerning demographic.

The differences that made the Player Organs far superior became very obvious very quickly, especially on models that were released after 1890.
The larger models had a range of 58 notes, and often had many different ranks of reeds (timbres of sound).

They attracted the respect of famous musicians who had them installed into their homes, and the adulation of the rich and famous were given, Pope Leo XIII himself granted a private audience to the technological marvel.

The best of these roll operated reed organs was the Orchestrelle created by the leading maker of Player Organs, the Aeolian Company.

It was capable of playing the two manual 116 note rolls of it’s  ultimate Big brother the Aeolian Pipe organ.

The Orchestrelle was designed to reproduce the tones of different orchestral instruments, enabling those that could afford it, the incredible luxury, of playing whole symphony arrangements in their own home.

It’s ultimate bigger brother the Aeolian Pipe organ, as the name suggests, was not a reed organ but a pipe organ.

It could play rolls that had a range of 116 notes it could manage 2 manuals and even control pedals.
Unfortunately it wasn’t until the devolpment of the reproducing organ in the 1920 that automatic tempo was added.

The Aeolian Pipe organ caused a pretty big stir on the professional music scene, with famous composers writing specifically for it.
The Aeolian Company used this publicity to sell these incredibly expensive machines to the very wealthy and apparently even managed to get some of these buyers, to invest back into the company as they attempted to get into the mass market with what became their most famous and successful venture.

The Pianola. (More on that in part 18).

The Player Organ was important not only as a much needed step in the refinement of automatic music, but also raised the bar far above the novelty music of it’s predecessors, turning  an automatic music maker into a serious musical instrument to be respected.
It’s technological advances also meant parallel advances in the ability to create sophisticated musical instructions.

In our next installment Part 18 we look at another way that solved the riddle of automatic music playing… CLICK HERE

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CLICK HERE for the INDEX of History Of Electronic Music