The Pianola Museum is a small museum of pianolas – automatic pianos invented round the turn of the century (1900). Pianolas were playable by hand as well as reproducing music using paper rolls with punched holes for each music note. As the recording of music on wax cylinders and gramophone records was still very primitive at the time, pianolas were very popular, with more than 2 million built.
The public was impressed by the automatic music and quality of the sound, and pianolas seemed to be an invention of the future. Important composers as Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Milhaud have written pieces of music especially for pianola. The reproducing piano was capable of playing back a performance of piano music by famous pianists of the day or even the composers themselves.
