Photoplayer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photoplayer
BenTurpin-and-Fotoplus-JunAug1922.jpg
US comedian Ben Turpin with a photo player.
classification Chordophone (piano)
Aerophone (organ)
Keyboard instrument
Membranophone (drums)
Idiophone (cymbal, cowbell)
Percussion instrument
Template: Infobox musical instrument / maintenance / parameter range missing
Template: Infobox musical instrument / maintenance / sound sample parameters missing


A PhotoPlayer also photo player , a mechanical musical instrument , which in the silent period to the acoustic background music from movies in the theater was used.

Surname

The term was initially a registered trademark of the American Photo Player Company ; The brothers Burt and Harold A. Van Valkenburg from Minnesota are considered to be the inventors . However, it is now generally used for mechanical musical instruments for cinema use. The name Photoplayer is made up of the English photoplay , silent film accompaniment music, and player piano , self-playing piano.

Furnishing

As with an orchestrion , the basic instrument of the photoplayer is also a ( electric , more correct actually: pneumatic) piano, around which other instruments such as pipe works that imitate string instruments (e.g. violins ) but can also produce organ sounds , drums and sound effects are arranged are. These are placed in side chests to the left and right of the piano case.

The sound effects, which are particularly popular for accompanying films, could each be called up separately by hand in order to be able to operate them synchronously with the events on the screen. B. car horns, locomotive whistles, bird calls , house or telephone bells and the like. This was done by pulling hand pulls, which in America were called cow-tails . Other effects were accessible via pedals.

With most of the makes, the piano could also be played by hand, and with some the pipes could also be played from a separate, second keyboard.

Usually, however, the photoplayer was controlled with piano rolls , as they are known from the electric piano or the orchestrion, which in addition to the information for melody and accompaniment also information about the orchestration, i.e. H. could contain the use of striking and pipe work. So that an uninterrupted game was possible, as required to accompany full-length films, photoplayer got two piano roll drives installed. When one piano roll was finished, the second started.

In the case of some models, the demonstrator was able to remotely control the playback from his cabin via a push-button panel, and because of the double piano roll mechanism, also the change of pieces.

Piano rolls

Piano rolls specially arranged for the illustration of silent films were also available. Thus, the company introduced The Film Music Co. of Los Angeles for many years "Picturolls" here, some of which were recorded by hand, many by artists like Eddie Horton, a well-known afterwards in Australia and New Zealand organist. They contained pieces by cinema composers such as William Axt , Gaston Borch , Fred Hager , Otto Langey , Ernst Luz , Ernö Rapée or JS Zamecnik and carried mood indications such as “dramatic - agitato” and notes such as “hurry - chase - comedy” operator of the instrument to facilitate the selection. It could be the usher or the card tearer. Because a trained pianist was no longer necessary ...

history

The photoplayer filled the gap between the modest “man at the piano” and the cinema bands, which could be between three and twenty men, depending on the wealth of the cinema entrepreneur. If a cinema organ was too expensive for you, the more affordable photoplayer was a good choice .

Between 1912 and 1928 approximately 8,000 to 10,000 photoplayer were manufactured and sold. The largest producers listed in the United States except for the American Photo Player Company of the inventor of the name - - the following brands link , Seeburg and Wurlitzer , which also built orchestrions and electric pianos.

After 1912, some piano manufacturers in Germany also entered the business of mechanically operated cinema instruments, including Hupfeld in Leipzig, Philipps in Frankfurt / Main and Welte in Freiburg / Breisgau.

With the advent of the sound film at the end of the 1920s, photoplayer disappeared from movie theaters .

literature

  • Rick Altman: Silent Film Sound (= Film and culture ). New edition. Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-231-11663-3 , pp. 324-330.
  • American Theater Organ Society (Ed.): Theater Organ: Journal of the American Theater Organ Society. Volume 28, American Theater Organ Society, 1986, pp. 16 and 19.
  • Rudy Behlmer: An Interview with Gaylord Carter, Dean of Theater Organists (1989). In: Mervyn Cooke: The Hollywood Film Music Reader. Oxford Univ. Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-533118-9 , chapter From “silents” to sound. No. 4, pp. 29-38.
  • David Q. Bowers: Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments. The Vestal Press, Vestal, New York 1972.
  • Jan Brauers: From the Aeolian harp to the digital player: 2000 years of mechanical music, 100 years of records. Verlag Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1984, p. 87.
  • Karlheinz Dettke: Cinema and theater organs: an international overview. Tectum Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-8288-8265-X , pp. 17, 135.
  • Michael Graber-Dünow: "There's only one time" - cultural work in the nursing home: background, concepts, examples. Verlag Schlütersche, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8426-8098-2 , p. 52.
  • James B. Hartman: The Organ in Manitoba: A History of the Instruments, the Builders, and the Players. Univ. of Manitoba Press, 1997.
  • David A. Jasen, Gordon Gene Jones: That American Rag. The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast. Schirmer Books, 2000, ISBN 0-02-864743-2 .
  • AW Owen: The Evolution of the Theater Organ. In: Theater Organ Review. Vol. V, No. 17, March 1951, pp. 8-9.
  • Harvey N. Roehl: The Player Piano, a historical scrapbook. Century House, Watkins Glen, New York 1958.
  • Jack Edward Shay: Bygone Binghamton. Remembering People and Places of the Past. Vol 2, Verlag AuthorHouse, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4670-6505-4 .

Web links

Audio samples:

  • Maud Nelissen from the Nederlands Film Museum plays on a photo player made by the American Photoplayer Company
  • Dick Zimmerman demonstrates the possibilities of a Style 25 photo player (piano, organ pipes, effects) (English)
  • Joe Rinaudo explains a Style 20 photo player (the smallest model with only one side cabinet )
  • Robert Israel accompanies a silent film with Buster Keaton (My Wife's Relations, 1925) on the American photo player, Style 20
  • Glenwood Vaudeville Revue Wurlitzer Motion Picture Theater Orchestra (Photo Player) with two keyboards for piano and organ pipes, built in 1918
  • Wurlitzer Style O photoplayer with side chests for pipe and percussion

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ this is composed of the English photo play for 'Kinostück' and player piano for 'electric piano', cf. Bowers pp. 367-381
  2. ↑ cf. Daniella Thompson : “Bread and music were staples of West Berkeley block” (3 March 2010)
  3. ↑ Maria Fuchs: Silent Film Music: Theory and Practice in the “General Handbook of Film Music” (1927) . Schüren Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-7410-0087-4 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ The American Photo Player . In: Silent Cinema Society . ( silentcinemasociety.org ).
  5. ↑ only the Phonoliszt Violina from the Hupfeld company used real violins that were crossed by mechanically operated 'bows', cf. technischesmuseum.at and Bowers p. 436 f.
  6. ↑ picture effects , cf. Hartman p. 115
  7. ↑ cf. Jasen-Jones p. 75: “Chicago's Photo Player Company introduced its Fotoplayer 50 model, which, besides music, could produce gongs, bird calls, wind, waves” ...
  8. ↑ cf. the statements of Joe Rinaudo
  9. ↑ so z. B. at the makes of Seeburg, cf. Bowers p. 616: "88-note-piano, 24 8-foot stopped diapason pipes, 61 flutes, 37 quintadena pipes"
  10. ↑ dual roll mechanism , cf. Altman p. 325.
  11. ↑ cf. Advertisement from Link Piano Co. Binghamton, NY "Link your theater to success" at Bowers, p. 485 and JP Seeburg, p. 616
  12. ↑ cf. Bowers p. 616 "Play Your Complete Musical Program With One Finger"
  13. ↑ cf. Complete Catalog of Picturolls: Indexed as to Dramatic and Emotional Character . 19 pages long, published by Sherman Clay & Co., San Francisco, November 1918; fig. at theatreorgans.com , a Picturoll (No. 288) shown. at shaw.ca , others at rinaudosreproductions.com
  14. ↑ cf. alukhet.com ( Memento of the original from June 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , e.g. B. Picturoll # 794 Agitato No. 2 (Dramatic - Hurry, Struggles etc.) (Rapee-Akst), Picturoll # 916 Galloping Furies (Cattle Stampede - Agitato - Dramatic) or Picturoll # 1094 Horse Radish, One Step (Hurry - Bright - Chase Comedy - General Popular) Ring -Hager (i.e. Fred Hager) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / alukhet.com
  15. ↑ cf. on this Altman, Chapter 17 cue-sheets and photoplay music, p. 345 ff.
  16. ↑ cf. Altman p. 325.
  17. ↑ an advertisement from the time of the First World War (from The Moving Picture World , October 19, 1918, p. 387) advertised with the macabre note “performs patriotically by releasing musicians needed in war service” . at img.com
  18. ↑ cf. Shay p. 529 “They were used in movie houses when the manager wanted something more than just a piano but couldn't justify organs” and Altman p. 330.
  19. ↑ cf. Altman, chapter “The motion picture orchestra” p. 300 ff.
  20. ↑ cf. Gaylord Carter (in an interview with Behlmer p. 37): Oh, the smaller theaters that couldn't afford pipe organs had them. and Jörg J. Riehle : 100 years of Rudolf Wurlitzer's cinema organ (04.03.2011): “Only 3% of all cinemas bought a cinema organ to accompany silent films. Of these, only 6.8% were instruments from the Wurlitzer Company. German manufacturers such as Walcker (43.2%) or Welte (19.2%) were able to capture larger market shares because they offered their instruments at lower prices. "
  21. ↑ cf. Bowers p. 352
  22. ↑ Bowers pp. 481-487
  23. ^ JP Seeburg Piano Company, Chicago at Bowers pp. 598–619, on the Seeburg Motion Picture Player cf. P. 616 ff.
  24. ↑ the Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. New York-Cincinnati-Chicago called their product Motion Picture Theater Orchestra , cf. Bowers pp. 661-702, esp. 697 ff.
  25. ↑ Hupfeld built the clavimonium , which combined a piano and a harmonium in one case, which could work independently of one another but also together, cf. Photo at Bowers p. 435, where it says: a lever can be set in any of 3 positions: piano music only, piano and organ or organ only. and the orchestrion "Kino-Pan", which had no keyboard and could only be played with piano rolls. It could be operated remotely from the demonstration booth and cost a full $ 3,500 in 1925, cf. Bowers p. 455.
  26. ↑ In 1912 JDPhilipps offered the "duplex piano" especially for cinematographers , with which the piano and harmonium could be played alone and together . In addition, the instrument had a double piano roll mechanism that allowed it to play as long as desired without interruption , cf. Advertisement, fig. in Bowers p. 569
  27. ↑ the company, which also had an overseas branch in Poughkeepsie in the state of New York, built the Welte Theater Piano with a double roller mechanism for non-stop play for cinema purposes , cf. Bowers pp. 636-637 and 654