Phonographer

In the days before the phonograph, composers who wanted to have their music preserved for future generations had to write it down on paper. Now, thanks to recording machines, music can be engraved directly on the surface of wax discs, preserved as permanently as sculpture. The best swing music is not written down; it is improvised. Before the phonographic era, improvisation was as impermanent as a cloud of smoke. Today the woodnotes wild of Benny Goodman's clarinet can be made as durable as a Chopin nocturne, and copies can be distributed by the thousands.

Composers have viewed this change in the mechanics of their art with mixed emotions. Some throw up their hands and declare that the art of composition is done for. Others see the possibility of a new method of composing, envision composers of the future short-cutting to sound itself, creating not compositions on paper, but recordings in wax.

Prominent among the pioneers in this new field of composition is Raymond Scott, a Brooklyn-born musician, whose brother Mark Warnow has long rated as one of the Big Ten of U. S. danceband leaders. Composer Scott, whose real name is Harry Warnow (originally Warnofsky) is the creator of a dozen-odd recordings (Twilight in Turkey, Powerhouse, War Dance for Wooden Indians, etc.). His music, whose deliberate jazz style is so sophisticated that it seems almost a caricature of jazz, has attracted the attention of such musical bigwigs as Igor Stravinsky. Last week Bandleader Paul Whiteman devoted the best part of his CBS broadcast to Scott's dry, sharp-rhythmed music.

With the help of his "quintet" (which consists not of five, but of six instrumentalists), Composer Scott has recently created a "jazz laboratory" at CBS. Here, with recording equipment, engineers and arrangers at his disposal, he is continuing his curious task of building music directly for the microphone. His method is to start one player on a rhythm or a phrase of melody, add another instrument, adjust the balance between the two, throw in a dash of drumming or a splash of saxophone, and simmer the resultant mixture until ready for recording. With the help of recordings and re-recordings he can finally work up this concoction into a sort of musical composition.

Something of a wag in a field where well-considered waggery is always good publicity, Composer Scott has long been notorious for his absentmindedness, his incredible stories about himself ("I tell people I do things, and they believe me," he complains) and the goofy titles he gives his works. Sample: Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals. Of his wife, who carefully checks over all his compositions, on the lookout for unintentional plagiarisms, he says, "She's a regular musical blotter."

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