Composers and instrumentalists enjoy something akin to a symbiotic relationship in that their work can’t (with some exceptions) exist without the work of the other. Today’s living composers need to write for living performers otherwise scores will land on a shelf and never be heard. Whilst living performers don’t necessarily need to play music by living composers, there wouldn’t be any music to play if it hadn’t been for composers living and working throughout the last several centuries, so it’s in our best interest to keep the relationship alive, even if it’s not your cup of tea.
The written score and parts are in most cases the interface between composer and performer. They are the result of weeks, months even years of work by the composer and therefore contain huge amounts of information, and in the absence of the composer, the only vector of communication that can represent the work. In order to communicate the intentions of the composer thoroughly and inspire the performer to attend to detail, the score and parts have to be up to scratch, within the context of the composer’s own aesthetic of score presentation and mode of musical communication. Here are some tips to help us (performers, and in some cases specifically clarinettists) be able to approach your music with a greater sense of mutual respect, motivation and attention to detail:
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Nature and specificity of material for individual instruments: write for the instruments and not against them. The struggle between instrument and instrumental techniques can be apparent in a solo piece, but not (or at least much less so) in an ensemble or orchestral work, especially when this is happening in multiple instrumental parts at once. By “struggle” I’m referring to the kind of music where multiple techniques on one instrument struggle to co-exist and the interplay between them becomes an important aspect of the sound. Many of these details will be inaudible within a thickly layered sound. The ensemble or orchestral sound works because each and every musician knows how to blend their fundamental sound with others, depending on dynamic and where they are playing within the range of their instrument. By dismantling this finely tuned framework, you may be entering murky waters, and that is not wrong, just be very sure of what you are doing.
Density and distribution of material for individual instruments: keep your musicians engaged and involved! A tacet section is OK now and then but you’re writing for highly skilled performers that want to play their instruments and be involved in the progression of the music. There is nothing worse than sitting there for 5, 10 or 20 minutes with nothing to play, and then one bar of inaudible material, and then again nothing. This is an absurd example (but it does happen) but as a composer you do have to - to some extent - make people want to play your music, so, take care of your players, give them interesting things to play of a reasonable level of challenge, and if a long tacet section for any one instrument is unavoidable, provide them with cues so they can easily find their next entry (and perhaps a solo later on…).
Write what you want to hear, and mean it: you are the composer. It is your decision what to put on the page and you have to stand by it. It’s fairly uninspiring not to mention frustrating to hear a composer say, for example, “it doesn’t matter which pitch, just a very high one” when they’ve written an exact pitch in the score, but want an approximate one (and even then the idea of an approximate pitch varies from instrument to instrument, and is in most cases a very risky way to go about composing as pitch, register and volume [loudness] are inextricably linked). The musician may have practiced producing the written pitch for weeks, only to have you say “it doesn’t matter”. Everything matters. Practise thinking about your music in a way that makes it sacred and that starts with your attitude to everything you put on the page, because it will be treated as gospel. If you don’t know what you want to hear at the time you put a note on the page, come back to it later and figure it out, define it, before the score and parts make their way to the performers. The rehearsal isn’t a workshop (unless it is one…) and people are there to work, play music, and not necessarily to clarify dozens of questions because the score and parts are not up to scratch.
Don’t continue the neglect of certain instruments: if it’s an ensemble/orchestral “tutti” and some instruments aren’t included, there needs to be a very solid reason for it. Doubling other parts is more interesting than not playing at all. Today there is no reason to assume technically difficult passages won’t work on auxiliary instruments: if you provide a musician with a reasonably challenging part, that calls on their well-trained skills (as opposed to skills unfamiliar to them), this will in most cases inspire rather than discourage. There are good reasons to provide rests for certain players, but don’t overdo it.
Consistent usage of terms and symbols throughout: If you are using unconventional playing techniques (often called extended techniques) keep these terms and/or symbols consistent throughout the score and make sure these are transferred correctly to the parts. Regardless of software, a symbol may land in another part under certain circumstances.
Importing techniques from one instrument to another: this can be an interesting way to describe sound but it’s important to designate the technique as one that has been taken from, or should imitate another instrument. One frequently misused term is “slap”, or in full, “slap-tongue” (a percussive tonguing technique on single-reed instruments). Although this sound can be imitated on other instruments, it’s not called a slap (with the exception of slap-pizz on a double bass or bass guitar, however this is a modern take on the Bartók pizz) and it differs wildly in volume and physical implications. It will frustrate non-single-reed players to no end if they are instructed to play a slap(-tongue) because each instrument has it’s own vocabulary for percussive attacks. For example, a flute has a tongue ram and a tongue pizzicato (“pizz.”), the former transposing the resulting pitch by a minor seventh and the latter being relatively soft. Oboe and bassoon can perform a tongue ram with or without the reed, but it’s more of a pop, plop or even flap, most definitely not a slap (and much quieter). On brass instruments a similar tongue ram action is possible, with or without mouthpiece, and they can strike the mouthpiece with their hand. Strings have the famous Bartók pizzicato. All of these effects are percussive but possess very different dynamic and practical implications, so, orchestrating a giant tutti chord and instructing all players to play the note slap/flap/pizz/ram/pop/plop with fortissimo across the board, is going to result in a very unbalanced sound. The clarinets and saxophones, and depending on the size of the string section, their respective slaps and Bartók pizzicati will dominate the sound. The oboes and bassoons will not be heard. The flutes and brass may be audible depending on the size of the section and selected pitches. Be selective when you want to hear percussive sounds from non-percussion instruments and provide them with a context in which their specific techniques can be heard or contribute to the larger sound.
List all instruments and transpositions within the score preface: it’s important to have an overview of everything involved in your composition. Instruments (incl. all percussion instruments), any doublings, their respective transpositions and any important characteristics of instruments (eg. if it’s absolutely paramount that an instrument has a certain range, particularly regarding woodwind and percussion instruments, this should be noted). If it’s an opera or stage work, all roles, voice types and other intended details (physical appearance, character traits etc.) pertaining to them. If there’s multimedia involved, details of how this will be integrated into the work, performed and what kind of technology is required incl. links where people can download the files, software, drivers etc. And then you need to make sure that every single part for every single player has their own individual list of required instruments printed on the first page or within the preface to the part. This might just be “2nd violin”, it might be “oboe, oboe d’amore in A, cor anglais in F”, it might be “percussion 3: five-octave marimba, vibraphone, ratchet, bass drum, triangle”. The player needs to know upfront, without opening the full score, what they need to play. Don’t surprise them on the 4th page of the part by changing to an instrument that they didn’t know about.
Intervals: the way they are spelled (yes, also in transposed parts) matters! A C major chord in root position is spelled C, E, G. It is not spelled C, F-flat, G even though this would sound the same. This example may seem almost ludicrous, however this kind of thing appears in notated music, and particularly in poorly transposed parts, on a regular basis. Everything matters, even the way you spell chords, scales, flurries, long notes, everything. Why? Because musicians spend most of their lives practicing patterns of pitches that have been logically organised - in accordance with keys, harmonies and other pitch structures - so that they are able to be internalised and memorised. It’s not just about muscle memory, these are fundamentals of music theory and your use of this language will either engender respect or leave some people questioning whether you’ve learned the basics of music theory at all. Even in long sequences of pitches with no tonal centre, it will assist musicians in learning your music if you spell these with as many intervals that they instantly recognise as possible, of course within the rigour of your language of pitch. This means a majority of minor, major and perfect intervals and a minority of diminished and augmented intervals. Intervals expressed as augmented or diminished intervals can be difficult to read on the fly so there should be a good reason for them. Diminished fifths and augmented fourths are mostly unavoidable.
One major pitfall of enharmonic spellings occurs in parts for transposing instruments because they are not proofread. Make sure that the existence of E-sharps, B-sharps, C-flats and F-flats is justified and not just the result of lazy transposition. Why does a sounding E minor arpeggio appear as a G-flat minor arpeggio in the B-flat clarinet part, when F-sharp minor would be simpler? These are very basic examples but transposed parts have to read like music that you wrote and not what a computer spat out.
Key signatures for transposing instruments: Do you write atonal music that never requires key signatures? If so, then your parts for transposing instruments should not have key signatures. There are very few reasons for the composer of an atonal piece of music to provide players with cor anglais and horn parts in G major, clarinet and trumpet parts in D major, alto saxophone parts in A major just because the computer thinks the music is in C major. If there’s an option to set the key to “atonal", do it. If not, delete the key signatures from the transposed parts. Particularly if the music if fairly difficult, the presence of key signatures will make it more difficult to learn, not least because the key signature has nothing to do with the music written. Please, please check your parts for transposing instruments!
Microtonality: Using pitches in between the chromatic scale harbours various pitfalls and is a very complex area of music composition. From a performer’s perspective, here are my top tips to keep us interested:
Use some kind of responsible system of microtonal pitches that has an audible impact on the overall sound. This might be in the form of creating scales that have microtonally inflected pitches, or basing your harmonies on the microtonal aspects of the overtone spectum. These are just two examples of many possibilities.
Know what the microtonal capabilities of each instrument that you’re writing for are. If you’re unsure, ask someone that knows.
Check all microtonal pitches after creating transposed parts. Avoid microtonal spellings such as B-¾-sharp, C-¾-flat, E-¾-sharp and F-¾-flat. Why? Because these pitches can be spelled much more simply as C-¼-sharp, B-¼-flat, F-¼-sharp and E-¼-flat. ¼-spellings (or ⅓, ⅙, ⅛) are easier for the brain to process than spellings with a larger numerator.
The section on enharmonic spellings above applies to microtonals as well. So please think about the way all pitches are expressed in your music. It matters.
Differences in acoustic situation between chamber ensemble, large ensemble and orchestra: The context in which your music will be performed should be considered whilst composing. Is it a large concert hall, a medium-sized recital hall, a small, perhaps dry room? Is it an orchestra, a large ensemble or a chamber ensemble? These two factors will influence audibility of very soft sounds, mostly in the form of extended techniques.
There is a plethora of extremely interesting extended techniques on all instruments but many of these are very quiet and delicate. Some of these include bowing the tailpiece of a stringed instrument, air sounds and key clicks on woodwinds and split-tones on brass. The way you orchestrate these sounds is paramount to them being heard: at all. But be careful: even if you peel back the texture and score key clicks for a solo flute in the middle of a large orchestra performing in a large hall, these might very well not be heard at the back of the hall.
Two tips to aid soft extended techniques being heard:
In an orchestral setting, amplify the technique by have the maximum number of players perform it at the same time. If it is an easily performable technique, this is to your advantage. Techniques that are difficult, or very short sounding are subject to partial failure. Even if you amplify any given technique by sheer numbers, the sound can still be quickly obscured by “normal” instrumental sounds because they tend to project further. Careful orchestration is paramount here.
You might have more freedom with a smaller acoustic and instrumentation. The directness of sounds will be greater here, the proximity to the audience smaller. Asking soloists to perform softly sounding extended techniques in this context will work better. Nonetheless, do not cover them. Maintain a sparse, thin texture so that the sounds can successfully emanate from the ensemble.
The last piece of advice I have for you is this: study the existing repertoire for the instrumentation for which you are writing, or at least a similar instrumentation. You will find stacks of inspiration and perhaps one or two things not to do. Musical creation doesn’t exist in a vacuum: it occurs in conversation with all the works that came before it, and with the musical experience of the performers and listeners. Your work is part of this complex web of aesthetic interaction.
