Popper & Co. (Leipzig, Germany)

This Popper Roland is the only known remaining example in a beautiful Victorian style case with fantastic paired hanging lamps and mirrors. It is both a standard orchestrion that can play complex arrangements on its various instruments, as well as a Jazzband model, controlled by a switching device within the music roll spool box. When in Jazzband mode, it plays a slide instrument known as a Swanee Whistle or, as it was described in original sales literature, a Lotus Flute. The slide whistle plays from an ingenious mechanism that automatically follows the highest note in the melody playing on the music roll. The instrument also includes violin pipes and percussion. Both modern and traditional case styles were manufactured with fewer than a dozen examples of all styles known to still exist. Acquired from the renowned Klaus Fischer Collection, it was fully restored in 1999 by Musikwerkstatt Monschau, Germany. It includes 80 music rolls.

Hugo Popper, who operated the company bearing his name, was one of the brightest stars in the musical industry in Leipzig. An accomplished musician, impresario and manufacturer, he led Popper & Co. to leadership in a wide spectrum of piano-related automatic musical instruments, ranging from upright keyboard styles to large and ornate orchestrions. By 1909 Popper advertised that it had "a full line of instruments for public places, including cinema theatres and roller skating rinks."

Hugo Popper passed away in 1910 and was widely mourned. The firm's operation was successfully continued by his family and others, and instruments were made through the late 1920s. By that late decade, Popper, Hupfeld and Weber were the three prime innovators in creating piano orchestrions especially suited for jazz and other popular music styles (see the Hupfeld Sinfonie-Jazz Model 9 offered in this catalogue). 64x100x34 inches.