VOA标准英语2010年-Good Bye to a Nostalgic Musical Artifa

This girl did not have to anything but watch the piano roll turn on her player piano at her home in New Jersey¹ in 1940.

Not long ago, the daily newspaper in Buffalo², New York, ran a story under the headline, The Day the Music Died.  Not all music, but music of a most unusual sort. 

More than a century ago, the piano was a status symbol in every respectable American parlor³.  It was the home entertainment center before radio and phonographic records came along.  But a pianist was not always handy, so mechanical pianos, called pianolas or player pianos, took their place. 

IceCreamMan, Flickr Creative Commons
This fellow is winding⁴ (or unwinding) a piano roll. The punched holes engage sprockets in a player piano that, in turn, connect to the strings⁵ that play the corresponding note.

We mentioned player pianos briefly⁶ recently in a story about the musician Scott Joplin and his invention of ragtime⁷ music in Sedalia, Missouri. 

As the name suggests, player pianos almost played themselves, using something called piano rolls. Even someone who knew nothing about music could pump the pedals on the instrument.

Pressure from the pedals turned rolls of stiff paper into which little perforations were punched in many as 88 locations along a line. That matches the number of keys on the piano keyboard.

The holes passed over sprockets that caused hammers inside the pianola to strike the piano wires.

And the vibrating wires produced music, much as they would in a standard piano. 

Sometimes the player piano's mechanism⁸ could be rigged so that it also depressed⁹ the actual piano keys as if a ghost were sitting on the bench, playing a lively tune¹⁰. 

Coin-operated player pianos called nickelodeons soon appeared in bars, ice-cream parlors¹¹, and poolrooms.

Customers would select a song, drop a coin into a slot and the appropriate piano roll would play the selected song.  

kipbot, Flickr Creative Commons
People who owned player pianos kept boxes and boxes of piano rolls, much as people later collected phonograph records. These were made by a company that recently stopped making piano rolls.

People built libraries of piano rolls, much as they would later amass¹² collections of records and compact discs. But as technology advanced, piano rolls and player pianos became curiosities - musty museum pieces.  

And then a 108-year-old company in Buffalo, New York, called Q-R-S, the world's last mass producer of piano rolls, stopped making them. So that was the day that at least one kind of old-fashioned music did, in fact, die.
 

1 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

2 buffalo   

n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛

参考例句：

• Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
• The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。

3 parlor   

n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅

参考例句：

• She was lying on a small settee in the parlor.她躺在客厅的一张小长椅上。
• Is there a pizza parlor in the neighborhood?附近有没有比萨店？

4 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。

5 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

6 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

7 ragtime   

n.拉格泰姆音乐

参考例句：

• The most popular music back then was called ragtime.那时最流行的音乐叫拉格泰姆音乐。
• African-American piano player Scott Joplin wrote many ragtime songs.非裔美国钢琴家ScottJoplin写了许多拉格泰姆歌曲。

8 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

9 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

10 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

11 parlors   

客厅( parlor的名词复数 )； 起居室； （旅馆中的）休息室； （通常用来构成合成词）店

参考例句：

• It had been a firm specializing in funeral parlors and parking lots. 它曾经是一个专门经营殡仪馆和停车场的公司。
• I walked, my eyes focused into the endless succession of barbershops, beauty parlors, confectioneries. 我走着，眼睛注视着那看不到头的、鳞次栉比的理发店、美容院、糖果店。

12 amass   

vt.积累，积聚

参考例句：

• How had he amassed his fortune?他是如何积累财富的呢？
• The capitalists amass great wealth by exploiting workers.资本家剥削工人而积累了巨额财富。