Music Trade Review

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OCTOBER 30,
1920
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
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The Fundamental Principles Involved
in the Composing and Arranging of
BY DR. EDWARD SCHAAF
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(Editor's Note. Doctor Schaaf is a musician who has
given much attention to the problem of arranging music
for the player-piano in such a way as to bring out the
instrument's true voice and real musical value. As he
says, "there is only one way to unlock the magic of the
player-piano keyboard and that is to treat the instrument
as a new voice in music." Doctor Schaaf has self-sac-
rificingly devoted much of his time, without thought of
material reward, to the rewriting of music for the special
purpose of making it truly suitable for the player-piano
and has achieved some astounding results. He has also
composed a number of special pieces for the player-piano
only, conceived in the most modern style of what he calls
"plastic music"; and altogether wonderful. Doctor Schaaf
has already published in The Music Trade Review the re-
sults of some earlier researches into this subject, and the
present series of extremely interestrftg and fascinating ar-
ticles, of which this is the eighteenth and last, represents
the latest fruit of his studies.)
I enter upon the last section of these studies.
Through them I have tried to explain how the
player-piano provides us with an entirely new
phase in music. I have tried to show how this
new instrument compels a complete rethinking
of the principles of musical composition, so far
as these have been applied in the past to the
ordinary piano. If I have succeeded in making
the reader understand that the player-piano is
not an ordinary piano, but a novel musical
weapon of tremendous and almost unknown
power, worthy of the exercise of all the skill and
imagination that composers have at their com-
mand, I have done what I set out to do.
But there is one more element which deserves
careful consideration, for it provides in fact a
climax to these studies.
Plastic Music
The extraordinary ability of the player-piano
to negotiate at very great speed and with the ut-
most ease any conceivable group or succession
of tones has the logical consequence of produc-
ing an entirely new branch of musical compo-
sition. To this I have ventured to give the title
"plastic music," not because this is necessarily
the best name, but because it appears at present
most adequately to express the possibilities of
the case.
When a series of tones or chords is played
at such a speed that the ear is unable to feel
each individual tone or group separately, and
when thus the individual sound is lost, it usually
occurs that an entirely unexpected rhythmical
effect emerges. The new theory of plastic music
is largely based upon this elementary considera-
tion.
In the Ballade "Tamerlane," after Poe's poem
of that title, I worked out my first definite con-
ceptions of this new form. The example from
Fig. 104
that ballade shown by Fig. 104 demonstrates
clearly what I am referring to.
If the extraordinary series of tones which
is here set forth is played over by hand
on the regular piano the result seems to
be almost lacking in any dynamic value, a mere
jumble of tones without special form or ac-
centuation. On the other hand, when this same
Music for the Player-Piano
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passage is performed on the player-piano at the
very high speed set for it, and with the mathe-
matical precision of that instrument, a quite un-
expected rhythmical accent emerges, an accent
which the musical natation neither promised nor
appeared capable of attaining. The reader is
earnestly desired to test the accuracy of this
statement.
I direct attention to another passage conceived
in plastic style, as shown by Fig. 105. In this,
again, the paper shows us apparently no posi-
Fig. 105
tive accents. Yet on the player-piano we find
this imbued with plastic beauty, the accents
falling on the ear in a regular but quite unex-
pected and seemingly unaccountable manner.
I could give many other examples, but these
will suffice to illustrate my statement that a
musical structure of novel form and unexpected
beauty can be planned, including special
rhythmic accents, which become evident only
when the tonal tints have been deliberately
mixed by the resolving element of high speed.
The piano score written or printed conveys its
musical idea direct. It is essentially graphic and
pictorial. No music which has been differently
planned can or should be written for it. The
player-piano, however, is far more subtle in that
it can negotiate with highly satisfactory and
sometimes wonderfully beautiful effects musical
patterns which seem entirely without meaning
when set down on paper in musical notation.
At the same time it would be wrong to assume
that cacophony or crude effects have any place
in the scheme of this plastic music. Plastic
music on the contrary is absolute music, whose
beauty of design is conceived through a process
wholly intellectual, yet fascinatingly sensuous in
results. The eye alone will give no satisfactory
mental grasp of the musical thought. The no-
tation is of very little use. The music must be
heard.
The Classic Limitation
Why did the classic and modern composers
overlook the possibilities of plastic music?
Simply because they could not dream of writ-
ing anything which went beyond the boundaries
of ten-finger performance. Although it is per-
fectly true that the practical artist has often
gone ahead of the scientist or craftsman in his
ideas and has anticipated later improvements,
it remains that in the case of the player-piano
we have a scientific and industrial achievement
destined to lead instead of to follow musicians.
The invention and steady perfection of the
player-piano ought to force the composer be-
yond the limitations which mark the boundary
line of music conceived for ten-finger perform-
ance. Composition evolved out of such limited
performance must therefore be modified to suit
the new conditions.
Right and Left Hand Music
Another point will present itself to the dis-
criminating readier. The great composers for
the piano were compelled by the nature of things
to consider their music from what may be called
a right and left hand point of view. It did not
often occur to these great men to attempt the
composition of music which should invest the
lower half of the tonal sys-
tem with the same dignity
and importance
as was
readily bestowed upon the
other half. Now, truly, this
statement does not hold with
respect to the very early
masters previous to and con-
temporary with Sebastian Bach, but it certainly
applies to music composed after that time;
mainly on account of the particular manner in
which musical instruments were developed.
In other words, musical composition up to the
present day has been so much influenced by the
peculiar limitations of ten-finger play upon the
piano keyboard that even the orchestral com-
posers such as Beethoven, Wagner and others
have been affected by it. Music, in a word, has
been homophonous; that is to say, based upon
the fundamental notion of a melody plus an ac-
companiment.
Utilizing All the Registers
Now the player-piano shows us that music
which favors neither the middle nor the upper
nor the lower register may be not only effec-
tive, but quite as attractive and very much more
interesting than music in which the middle and
especially the lower register have been made
subservient to the other. In my fantasy, "Pan-
dora's Box," I have developed in a preliminary
manner the possibilities of all three registers
of the player-piano on this basis.
Again in my second and third Ballades there
are to be seen the first efforts to place the three
registers, upper, middle and lower, on an abso-
lutely even footing. Of course this has done
away with the "melody and accompaniment"
style of music. The musical effect of these two
works ("The Masque of the Red Death" and
"The Devil in the Belfry," both after Poe) is
in general uncanny and mysterious, as their
themes, of course, imply. The impressions they
give arise mainly from the fact that discords
and modulations are not emphasized on account
of the high speed at which most of the passages
are played. Likewise, of course, the fact that
both the melody and accompaniment are dropped
out of the composition, almost entirely to be re-
placed by a wholly different scheme, assists in
producing a similar weirdness, which at the
same time does not become uninteresting or in-
artistic.
Musicians have often noticed in the works of
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