Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T15:05:26.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mechanical instruments and everyday life: the player piano in Portugal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2021

João Silva Open the ORCID record for João Silva [Opens in a new window]
João Silva*
Affiliation:
INET-MD, Lisboa, 1069-061, Portugal
*
E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines player pianos in Portugal between the 1890s and the 1930s. In a small European country with few production facilities, mechanical music developed in a particular way since a local recording industry was expanding rapidly and radio was not yet disseminated. Despite the local market's reliance on imported goods, the music business concentrated on Portuguese pieces. The mechanisation of the piano and its display as a product that embodied modernity illustrates the transformations that took place in Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century. These were reflected in new forms of entertainment, such as cinemas and nightclubs that incorporated new music genres. At the dawn of the century, the leisure market relied on the popular music theatre, which was dominated by Portuguese, French and Spanish music. In the interwar period, English and American pieces made their way into people's lives, transforming the music business.

Type
Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 58 - 74
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

‘American Pianos Sell Well in Europe’. 1922. Presto, 21 October, p. 9.Google Scholar
‘A pianóla da casa Aeolin’. 1914. O Zé, 26 March, p. 2.Google Scholar
Barnett, K.S. 2006. ‘Furniture music: the phonograph as furniture, 1900–1930’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 18/3, pp. 301–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barros, J.L. de. 1990. Os Night Clubs de Lisboa dos anos 20 (Lisbon, Lucifer Edições)Google Scholar
Best, . ?1920. Catálogo general (Barcelona, Tip. Vda. de Luis Tasso)Google Scholar
Brun, A. 1908. ‘O theatro por dentro’, in Illustração Portugueza, 2 November, pp. 20–8 and 9 November, pp. 4–9Google Scholar
Capitão X [André Brun]. 1917.‘Migalhas da guerra’, Portugal na Guerra, November, p.10Google Scholar
Carvalho, M.A. Vaz de. 1880. Mulheres e creanças: notas sobre educação (Oporto, Joaquim Antunes Leitão e Irmão)Google Scholar
Casa Beethoven, . 1914. Catalogo de Musicas para ‘Pianolas e ‘Pianos-Pianola’ (Rio de Janeiro, Nascimento Silva & Cia)Google Scholar
‘Creada – Precisa-se’. 1931. O Pirolito, 29 August, p. 5Google Scholar
Diana, . ?1919. Diana: rollos de música perforada adaptables a toda clase de aparatos y pianos automáticos de 88 notas (Madrid, Unión Musical Española, antes Casa Dotesio)Google Scholar
Dias, A. 2013. ‘A indústria de rolos de piano brasileiros’, parts 1–2, 6 December. https://www.ernestonazareth150anos.com.br/posts/index/37 and https://www.ernestonazareth150anos.com.br/posts/index/38 (accessed 23 March 2021)Google Scholar
Dolan, B. 2009. Inventing Entertainment: The Player Piano and the Origins of an American Musical Industry. (Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield)Google Scholar
Dolge, A. 1911. Pianos and their Makers (Covina, CA, Covina)Google Scholar
Ferreira, J.G. 1980. ‘Agora vou falar de pessoas que não se libertam sem dor do passado’, in Relatório de sombras, ed. Ferreira, J.G. (Lisbon, Moraes), pp. 23–6Google Scholar
Ferreira, R. 2006 [1936]. Memórias de um ex-morfinómano (Lisbon, Frenesi)Google Scholar
Ferro, A. 1923. ‘A idade do “jazz-band”’, in Diário de Lisboa, 9 February, p. 3Google Scholar
Gitelman, L. 2004. ‘Media, materiality, and the measure of the digital; or, the case of sheet music and the problem of piano rolls’, in Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture, ed. Rabinovitz, L. and Geil, A. (Durham NC/London, Duke University Press), pp. 199–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grajeda, T. 2012. ‘Introduction to part II (cinema)’, in Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio, ed. Taylor, T.D., Katz, M. and Grajeda, T. (Durham NC, Duke University Press), pp. 137–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, D. 2005. Paris, Capital of Modernity (London, Routledge)Google Scholar
‘His Majesty Emperor William: A Purchaser of an Aeolian Orchestrelle’. 1902. Music Trade Review, 20 March, p. 26Google Scholar
Holland, F.W. and Ord-Hume, A.W.J.G. 2001. ‘Reproducing piano’, in Grove Music Online, ed. Macy, L. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online (Oxford, Oxford University Press). http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/52058 (accessed 23 March 2021)Google Scholar
‘Instrumentos portuguezes’. 1912. Arte musical, 31 January, pp. 15–16Google Scholar
Johnson, E.T. 2003. ‘Player piano’, in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, ed. Macy, L. (Oxford, Oxford University Press). https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002253760?rskey=Udq6sQ&result=2 (accessed 23 March 2021)Google Scholar
Keillor, E. 2006. Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity (Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press)Google Scholar
Leppert, R. 1992. ‘Sexual identity, death, and the family piano’, 19th-Century Music, 16/2, pp. 105–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Losa, L. 2013. Machinas fallantes; a música gravada em Portugal no início do século XX (Lisbon, Tinta-da-China)Google Scholar
Losa, L. and Belchior, S. 2010. ‘The Introduction of phonogram market in Portugal: Lindström labels and local traders (1879–1925)’, in The Lindström Project: Contributions to the History of the Record Industry: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Schallplattenindustrie, vol. 2. ed. Gronow, P. and Hofer, C. (Vienna, Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger), pp. 7–11Google Scholar
‘Manifesto às raparigas portuguesas’ (1933) Movimento: cinema, arte, elegância, 15 June, pp. 2–3Google Scholar
Melo, D. 2003. ‘Parque Mayer: 80 Anos da Broadway Portuguesa’, in História, 54, March, pp. 39–43.Google Scholar
Menano, A. 1924. Fado do Alemtejo (Lisbon, Sassetti & C.ª)Google Scholar
Merish, L. 2000. Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth- century American Literature (Durham NC, Duke University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
M.O. 1905. ‘O Phonola’, in O Occidente, 28 February, p. 46.Google Scholar
‘Música’ (1909) in Diário ilustrado, 9 May, p. 3Google Scholar
Música: revista de artes 1924. 1 October, p. 82Google Scholar
‘Noticias e réclamos – Animatographos’. 1912. Brasil–Portugal, 1 November, p. 687.Google Scholar
O Domingo ilustrado 1925a. 25 January, p. 11Google Scholar
O Domingo ilustrado 1925b. 20 December, p. 11Google Scholar
Ospina-Romero, S. 2018. ‘On pianolas and pianolists: Human–machine interactions, dialectical soundings, and the musicality of mechanical reproduction’, Keyboard Perspectives, 11, pp. 207–26Google Scholar
Ospina-Romero, S. 2019. ‘Ghosts in the machine and other tales around a “marvelous invention”: player pianos in Latin America in the early twentieth century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 72/1, pp. 1–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Piano Eléctrico’ (1901) in O tiro civil, 15 May, p. 8Google Scholar
Picker, J. 2003. Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford, Oxford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinto, A. 1907. ‘Chronicas musicaes’, Tiro e Sport, 31 October, pp. 11–12Google Scholar
Portugal. Ministério das Obras Públicas Comércio e Industria. 1903. Boletim da Propriedade Industrial, 2ª série – 18° anno (Lisbon, Imprensa Nacional)Google Scholar
Ramos, R. 1994. A segunda fundação, in História de Portugal, vol. 6, ed. Mattoso, J. (Lisbon, Círculo de Leitores)Google Scholar
Relvas, J. 1926a. Text on the Welte Mignon player piano, 12 February [typed]. PT/AHCP/FR/JMR/B/05/C4363.Google Scholar
Relvas, J. 1926b. Music catalogue for the Welte piano [typed]. PT/AHCP/FR/JMR/B/05/C4360.Google Scholar
Rollos Victoria, ?1919. Catalogo general (Barcelona, Tipo-Litografia José Benet)Google Scholar
Rollos Victoria, 1921. Apéndice al catálogo general – Diciembre (Barcelona, Viuda de Luis Tasso), DecemberGoogle Scholar
Rollos Victoria, 1924. ‘Fabrica de rollos “Victoria”: una sala de maquinas’, in Rollos, R, Suplemento no. 1, January–MarchGoogle Scholar
Rollos Victoria, 1929. Rollos musicales: primera marca española, fábrica fundada en 1905: catálogo general (Barcelona, Talleres Gráficos Rafael Llauger)Google Scholar
Roquer, J. 2017. Els sons del paper perforat: Aproximacions multidisciplinàries al fenomen de la pianola. PhD thesis (Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)Google Scholar
Schwartz, V. 1998. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press)Google Scholar
Smith, C.D. and Howe, R.J. 1994. The Welte-Mignon: its Music and Musicians (New York, Vestal Press)Google Scholar
‘Some Statistics Regarding the German Piano Trade’. 1919. The Music Trade Review, 13 December, p. 67Google Scholar
Sterne, J. 2003. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham NC, Duke University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suisman, D. 2010. ‘Sound, knowledge, and the “immanence of human failure”’, Social Text 102, 28/1, pp. 13–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, T.D. 2007. ‘The commodification of music at the dawn of the era of “mechanical music”’, Ethnomusicology, 51/2, pp. 281–305Google Scholar
‘The Foreign Markets’. 1920. Presto, 3 July, p. 26Google Scholar
Thompson, E. 2004. The Soundscape of Modernity (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press)Google Scholar