Overcoming piano-roll limitations : Pachmann plays Sabouroff's Polka

This article documents a minor but charming moment in the history of Russian music. It involves the little-known Russian composer Peter Petrovich Sabouroff and the well-known Ukrainian/Russian pianist Vladimir de Pachmann. In 1906 Pachmann recorded a piano roll in which he added improvisations to a Polka composed by Sabouroff. I use the roll to create a previously unavailable score of the composition (including the improvisations) and an audio rendition of Pachmann’s playing of it. This rendition does not use a physical reproducing piano; instead, the details recorded on the roll were mechanically digitised and then converted to sound by computer means. Piano roll recording technology had at least three substantial limitations. One limitation is newly discovered here: uncertainty as to which notes were actually played by the pianist; it is dealt with by editing the data. A second limitation is well-known: loudness was recorded at only two levels for the whole keyboard at any one time (though it could vary over time); it is dealt with by a novel algorithmic method. A third limitation concerns pedalling: only two levels were available, fully on or fully off; it is dealt with by editing based on listening. Finally, a new method of randomising the loudness attempts to give the rendition a more human quality than either the roll itself or the deterministic loudness algorithm could, by themselves, provide.