The Pianola

It sat in pride of place in gran's front parlour, a place to sneak into while the grown-ups did their grown-up things in other parts of the house. A  dark mahogany alien, heavier than an elephant and more mysterious than the far side of the moon.

At first sight it was a simple piano, like the millions of such instruments in parlours throughout the land, but this one was different; it was a piano-pianola and on the floor at one end of it sat a cardboard box containing more than a dozen rolls of perforated waxed paper, each about a foot wide with a circular disk at each end. Nothing in my entire life could have been more intriguing and beguiling than this magical beast.

I would sit on the stool in front of this perplexing invader and cautiously slide back the 
secret panel set directly in front of me in the main body of the instrument. And there it was, a wondrous mechanism into which you inserted the pianola roll of your choice in order to create unbelievable magic.

Across the middle of this hidden space was what appeared to be a long single voiced harmonica over which the roll would travel once fitted into place above it. As the roll travelled over the mechanism, the jacquard perforations in it allowed air from the harmonica to pass through it, which in turn, operated the keys of the piano in a manner totally unfathomable to an eight year old.

In order to power this alchemy, a second secret door beneath the keyboard had to be opened and a pair of hinged pedals lowered down onto the carpet. Placing your backside firmly against the stool, you then pedalled for all your might, operated a couple of secret levers set beneath yet another secret compartment at the front of the keyboard, and then grin from ear to ear as the theme tune to Pot Black, the Black and White Rag, burst from the bowels of the beast and filled the room. 

As if this weren't enough to delight every human sense I possessed, the ivory keys themselves moved up and down as if being played by invisible hands. This whole circus performance was an overwhelming experience, allowing you to bypass a lifetime of scales and arpeggios and anxious exams and become an immediate concert hall heartthrob, an Arthur Rubinstein, an Oscar Peterson or the guy in the saloon playing Honky Tonk in High Noon.

Many years later, the beast eventually became mine, but sadly it had been overwhelmed by modern techno gizmos which relegated such early attempts at music reproduction into anachronism. The world moved on and sadly left the parlour piano behind, much like the steam engine. They were both living, breathing entities which captured the hearts and imaginations of the time, but are now just fond memories. Some years ago, when moving house, we discovered to our dismay, that the removal men, however hard they laboured, were unable to extract the beast from its home in the sitting room. We left it where it was and moved on.