The archival object I observed in the Special Collections library was a pair of letters written by Percy Grainger. Percy Grainger was a composer and an admirer of Arthur Fickénscher, the first music director at UVA, and his “Polytone” invention. One of these letters was addressed to a man named Mr. Schwab in November of 1932. Grainger admires the work of Fickenscher so much so that he inquires about playing one of his compositions with Mr. Schwab in New York. He comments on how the piece has never been done before in New York and he would like to be part of the first group to do that. The other one of these letters that Grainger wrote was addressed to Fickenscher himself in 1932. It was written with a typewriter, and the color of the paper has faded darker as time has passed. It is signed with Percy Grainger’s signature with a tool other than the typewriter, potentially a pencil or pen. The letter expresses admiration for the creation of the “polytone” and how it is necessary for the progression of music for research purposes and, because of its spectacularity, should be used for performances in a concert setting as well. Grainger writes about how Fickenscher’s work with the polytone keyboard has “freed the musical interval,” which Grainger considered to be the “most important single ingredient in music.” When stating, “free the musical interval,” Grainger is referring to giving more options to performers on what intervals they can play on a keyboard instrument, and as will be shown, Arthur Fickenscher does that with the Polytone invention. The perspective that is missing in these letters observed is that of the musicians who did not appreciate the shift in musical styles of the time. Some people may not have seen the need to create a polytone keyboard and would have been just fine without the progression in music that Grainger believed to be occurring. This raises the question: Why did Grainger and Fickénscher find this innovation to be so important? To Grainger, he believed this creation to be the next big thing in music history and the progression of music.

Upon further research, I discovered an article written by Fickenscher that gives context to the work that Grainger was praising him for. The article is titled “The Polytone and the Potentialities of a Purer Intonation.” I found the article amongst the files in the Special Collections Library, but there is an online version of the same article. Fickencher expresses in this article the reasoning behind his research and the problems with tonality in keyboard instruments. On mostly all keyboard instruments, prior to the completion of his polytone, he found that the perfect fifth interval was slightly too far apart and the fourth interval slightly too close together, which are not significant matters relative to the distances between the major third and minor third interval. The major third interval is largely too far apart in the context of pure intonation, and the minor third is too small of an interval.

Fickenscher’s objective was to find a way to reduce the limitations set on keyboards in the realms of tonality. His article mentions that the only real limitations on a stringed instrument or a trombone are put on it by the individual users themselves. He created the Polytone instrument to get around these so-called limitations in the keyboard instruments. Fickénscher added more notes to an octave, specifically fifty-three notes to an octave, instead of the traditional twelve notes in an octave on a traditional keyboard. The reasoning behind this is that it is closer to pure intonation than 12-tone equal temperament is. His polytone attempts to arrive closer to pure intonation by doing this, such as how a string instrument can play any pitch and is microtonal. The added notes in the octave give the instrumentalist more opportunity to customize tonality and the distance between intervals.

At the time, microtonality, or the use of intervals smaller than a semitone, also known as a half-step, was only a concept believed to be achievable by instruments such as string instruments, the trombone, the flute, and a large majority of non-keyboard instruments. With keyboards, the only option for pitches is the notes preset into the keys, and you only have a limited number of tones that can be played. Fickénschers progress to include keyboards in this realm of acquiring microtonality was revolutionary and fits into the larger theme of modernism at that time, especially with the focus on modernist approaches in music. Fickénscher’s work solved an issue that progressive composers faced. In the 1900s, composers experimented with creating music with smaller intervals and more dissonant sounds. It was considered modern because of the drastic change this was from the traditional, tonal, classical composing that had taken place before. Society was used to listening to music that was always “pretty” and pleasing to the ear. With the modernist movement in music, this was not always the case for every piece. In this modernist era, these composers were working with a smaller interval, which was why Fickénscher’s accomplishment of having adjustable intonation on a keyboard instrument was so crucial during this time. With pre-modernist music, equal temperament with intervals was used for keyboard instrument pitches. Like it was mentioned before, some of these intervals using equal temperament do not contain perfect or “pure” intonation, but that was the cost of being able to switch between key signatures freely. Fickénscher’s polytone solved this dilemma by enabling composers and performers to play with smaller intervals that would make the intonation of specifically modernist pieces more accurate and giving the option for incrementally larger and smaller notes so that intonation could stay “pure” as the key signature changed.

Overall, the creation of the polytone was an exceptional, pivotal event for musical progression at the time. Part of the reason Fickenscher was admired and considered at the top of his field was because of the research that he completed to make this invention a possibility. He studied microtonality and found a way to make the intonation of intervals more pure and accurate on a keyboard instrument. Fickénscher aimed to create a solution to the lack of pure intonation that existed in the traditional piano keyboard, and he was able to do just that with the Polytone.

Works Cited

Collier, George. “Is Modern Music Out Of Tune? | 1 Minute Music Theory.” YouTube. Accessed February 25, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCYcS57eCqs&t=289s.

Fickénscher, Arthur. “The ‘Polytone’ and the Potentialities of a Purer Intonation.” The Musical Quarterly XXVII, no. 3 (1941): 356–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/xxvii.3.356.

Grainger, Percy. Letter to Arthur Fickénscher. “Correspondence.” United States of America: United States of America, October 28, 1932.

Grainger, Percy. Letter to Mr. Schwab. “Correspondence.” United States of America: United States of America, November 26, 1932.

“Microtonality.” Wikipedia, February 9, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtonality.