February 22, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
24
PRACTICAL INSTRUMENTATION
For School, Popular and Symphony Orchestras
By FRANK PATTERSON
Author of The Perfect Modernist
[Eighth Installment]
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
reference to the Sextette from Lucia; in Georgia he uses a bar from the Hall of the Mountain King, from Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite, etc.—there are endless examples. Such quotations are only really amusing when they have some association with the idea of the song to which they are attached.
Another matter for comment is the habit, that has been with us for a long time, of “ragging” or “jazzing” everything from Bach to Puccini. It began years ago, when the first inspiration of ragtime was on the wane and composers ran out of ideas. For a while everything was “ragged,” and it may be said, too, that for a while it seemed as if everything that had made up the American -musical idiom was lost. However, ragtime has now become a useful idiom, used with great moderation, and certainly interesting, and jazz has started on the same sort of a career, with the same tendency to borrow tunes and the same tendency to sweep everything into its basket. But there are evidences, even now, of satiety in the jazz market, and a good many features of the older idioms have made their reappearance. And out of all this a splendid idiom is rapidly taking shape, already quite recognizable as American and quite distinctly individual, in spite of the freedom with which composers and arrangers have borrowed from everything conceivable—Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, South Sea Island, Eskimo, Indian, Negro, Turkish, and the classics.
As has already been said, most of this music is presented in the shape of songs. Most of it, too, is in “split” time, which means 4—4 with two beats to the bar. This is a purely commercial proposition, and is, therefore, enormously valuable. Composers of American serious music, symphonic music, are making little or nothing worth while because they are failing (probably not trying) to write anything people want—music with a commercial value. The only music that is really American in America is that which tries to satisfy the public taste, and succeeds in so doing. It is of all sorts—church music, ballads, dance music, light opera, popular music.
This is a digression, but it is not out of place. For more failures have been made by would-be orchestra arrangers because they would not consider either the taste of the public or the taste and limitations of the players than from any other cause. Many composers, even of good music, write “impossible” orchestrations. The reason is simply that they fail to keep their mind on the purely practical. They often have sufficient knowledge, but fail to use it intelligently. They strive so anxiously after effects that their work becomes experimental.
This becomes very pertinent when we leave the narrow confines of the fox trot and approach the more orthodox waltz. We soon discover that the jazz arranger has little scope for his tricks in this simpler and quieter form of composition, and that it approaches much more nearly the methods in use in serious composition. It ceases to be a sort of joke contest between saxophones, muted trumpets, drums and traps. The saxophones are often omitted altogether, and the entire combination is restrained and sedate except where special features seem appropriate.
i •			r i	l ^	
					
Drums
J J J ^ -I
					
FT F Cello	־TT - j M
1^=^־ g— 	c	1		
|1	״T	T f 1׳f
Ex. 18
(To be continued)
Strictly National!
Further English indications combined with the orthodox Italian are, for instance, such as. “pizz (snap)” for the strings, which means to raise the string and let it snap back on the finger board. Also when some special effect is desired by the arranger he writes it out in full: “Play near the bridge and slide with one finger,” which means that the bow is to be played near the bridge and the left hand to slide up or down (in imitation, no doubt, of the Chinese one-stringed fiddle). In the trombone glissando effects are sometimes indicated by marking the “positions” (which are fully explained in another place).
For instance, a descending chromatic marked “3---------6” and slurred will
evidently mean that the player is to simply slide without break from one position to the next. The same meaning will attach to a series of two or three grace notes with a position number above the first of them. It is best to mark such passages “gliss” and also to indicate the position of the first and last notes.
in song arrangements (and most American popular music consists• of nothing else) care must be taken to indicate whether the arrangement is intended for accompaniment or for use without the voice. If for both, the proper differences must be noted. For instance: “voice for dancing” means that both melody and accompaniment notes are given, and that the melody is to be used in the absence of a singer.
With regard to mutes, just now very popular, there are various kinds, and anyone interested in understanding or writing for the popular orchestra will do well to visit an instrument store and look them over. Their effect is everything from a mild “soft-pedal” effect to a rattling “kazoo,” which sounds a good deal like the results children get with a piece of paper over a comb. This refers to the brass instruments. Sometimes the arranger wants an exaggerated “distance” effect and calls for “hat over mute,” the meaning of which is׳ unmistakable. This will be followed by “hat off.” The “kazoo” effect can be imitated on muted trumpets with a “tongue roll,” so marked above the note, which is also marked like a “tremolo” with three or four dashes through the tail. Strauss uses it to imitate the bleating of sheep in Don Quixote—so all the jazz is not in America!
The drums and traps are an important feature of jazz, especially when played by Negroes, who no doubt invented the “cut up” variety of interpretation, which is offensive when imitated by regular white musicians.' It is, in fact, rapidly going out, except among Negro musicians. But it is perfectly legitimate to write into orchestrations every drum and trap effect that has ever been used, or any effect calculated to add to the impressiveness of the humor of the music.
Drum parts are ordinarily written on two lines (bass clef), the upper line being for the snare drum, the lower for the bass drum and cymbals, played together by means of a foot pedal. Sometimes three lines are used, the upper one for the .snare drum, the lower one for the bass drum and the middle one for the cymbals, which are attached to the bass drum. This cymbal must not be confused with the suspended cymbal, or hand cymbals, which are separate and must be separately indicated. This is indicated by “cymbal,”, “on cymbal,” pair of cymbals,” or whatever is wanted. The pedal drum and cymbal is either written as two notes, or “tog,” meaning together, or “bass• drum,” which means without cymbal, or better still, “without cymbal.” The suspended cymbal parts are sometimes written with square headed notes. (See Exs 11, 16, 17.)
Other traps will be “block,” “bells,” “train bell,” “sand paper,” “baby cry” (“Ma! Mai”), “rim” or “hoops׳” of drum, followed by “on head;” “sticks,” “chimes,” “tarn tam,” “gong,” “Indian drum,” “cocoanut,” “bells-soft hammer’” or “soft bells,” “cow bell,” “triangle,” etc., etc. Whatever the effect, it is to be clearly indicated.
Cymbals, gongs and xylophones, etc., are played in (at least) three familiar ways—they may be struck a short staccato stroke, in which case they are marked “stopped”; they may be allowed to vibrate until the sound dies out, in which case they are marked “ring” or “ten” or “non tremolo” (sometimes both of these terms are used together); or they may be played tremolo, to be indicated by crosses through the tails of the notes.
Drum and trap parts are always written in the bass clef, except, of course, bells• and xylophone, for which the correct melody notes must be written. Drum and trap notes are always placed in the spaces. Ordinary notes are mostly used for the ordinary drums and traps, but square notes may be had, as well as crosses, and the use of these for gong and cymbal will facilitate matters for sight reading.
Transpositions lead to curious results, and occasional economy in printing, as when the bassoon and E flat baritone saxophone are printed on the same sheet. Two clefs are used, the bass clef for the bassoon and, immediately after it, on the same line, in brackets, the treble clef. The note that reads correctly for the bassoon in the bass clef becomes the same when read by the saxophone in the treble clef, owing to the transposition.
It is the habit of players to stick in memories from old favorites (and new favorites, too, for that matter) wherever they seem to fit, whether they are applicable or not, and arrangers have adopted the same plan, sometimes with amusing results. For instance, in the arrangement of Sing Song Man, Mr. Lampe has introduced two bars which seem to resemble a Japanese motive from Madame Butterfly; in the Wabash Blues Mr. Barry uses an unmistakable