ABSTRACT
During the 19th and early 20th centuries mechanical music played a significant part in Australian musical life. Such music had many forms: the music box, the barrel organ, the symphonion, the orchestrion, the band organ, etc. Most of these were devices that replicated the sound of instruments by responding to encoded instructions in a perforated paper or cardboard roll. Player pianos and piano rolls were imported from the U.S. prior to 1919. The QRS Co. set up an Australian branch office; it was purchased by G.H. Horton of Sydney, who made rolls under the trade name Mastertouch. Horton’s firm continued through the Depression and in the face of competing media, albeit at a lower production level. In 1959 the company was acquired by its present owner, Barclay Wright. It is now the only active piano roll manufacturer in the Southern Hemisphere. Nellie Melba offered a “Complete Singing Course” on a Mastertouch piano roll.
