As this articleshows, the term player piano colloquially refers to a variety of distinct but related instruments, produced by manufacturers in different countries and answering to varying technological, social, and aesthetic ends. Yet the device remains, in the words of Rex Lawson, “one of the most misunderstood musical instruments in the world.” 1 This confusion corresponds in some degree to the nature of the phenomenon itself. Nearly a century after its heyday in public awareness, the player piano is a widely recognized and enduringly fascinating piece of musical technology. Keywords: technology, instrument, mechanical music It shows how the instrument served a variety of cultural ends, from the immortalization of great pianistic interpreters, to leisurely domestic entertainment, to experiments in modernism such as “mechanical music.” The player piano serves as an example of the seemingly unlimited potential for creative appropriation and a warning against the pitfalls of technological determinism. This article surveys the course of the instrument’s development, distinguishes its various manifestations, and charts its varied and unforeseen uses. Yet the player piano remains deeply misunderstood in both its cultural and technological workings. The instrument, in its various forms, has been a lightning rod for vigorous debates about the nature of music, performance, and the ethical status of technology itself. Despite falling out of widespread use after the end of the 1920s, the player piano remains one of the most important technological innovations of the twentieth century.
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