piano-player

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who plays upon the pianoforte.
2. n. A mechanical device by which a pianoforte may be sounded automatically, without the action of the player's hands upon the keys. A number of such machines are now made, either in a form detachable from the piano itself or contained within the piano-case. Usually they consist of a blowing apparatus operated by treadles, like a reed-organ (occasionally by electricity), which supplies compressed air both to put in revolution a music-roll with perforations which represent the tones of a given piece, and to actuate a series of levers or ‘fingers’ that operate the keys of a pianoforte. The music-roll is so inserted that as it is rolled from one cylinder to another its perforations pass over a row of small orifices through which the air is admitted to or discharged from the bellows through pneumatics that control the ‘fingers’: when a perforation coincides with one of these orifices, its ‘finger’ is suddenly released and strikes the appropriate key on the keyboard. As now perfected, with various mechanisms for varying the speed of the roll and the loudness of the tones, piano-players have become distinctly important as means for the enjoyment and study of many classes of music, especially as thousands of pieces of music are available for use upon them, including transcriptions of orchestral works and the like that could not otherwise be played by a single player directly.