Ever had the urge to just… flee? To get out of the immediate situation you’re in and deal with the social repercussions at some future date?
It was a small but not insignificant part of university life as a composer to bring in compositions to ‘workshops’, to be played by touring musical ensembles. While these workshops were great experience, they were not always ‘great experiences’. I recall one particular afternoon where the seasoned trombonist of a brass quintet lambasted my naive trombone writing and poor cueing, bar by bar. I struggled to keep track of his feedback and, seemingly, so did he, as he ended up reeling off all the ‘composer jokes’ he knew. The subtext of these jokes was, of course, how detached composers were from the reality of performing.
I didn’t sense that the other players or composers felt comfortable with the atmosphere and, after a few minutes of this sort of thing, our tutor did intervene, saying something like, ‘well, making mistakes is the best way for a composer to learn- we’ve all been there’. I think the trombonist relented at this point and the session continued, albeit without me. Face smarting with embarrassment, I’d surreptitiously packed my bag and slipped out of the door as soon as the focus shifted onto the next composer.
While fortunately not directly having a huge number of experiences like that, I’ve definitely witnessed a fair few. They highlight two gulfs that seem worth exploring.
The first is the gulf between the artistic vision of a composer and the practical reality of what’s achievable. This might mean ‘achievable’ in an absolute sense (for example, a portamento slide of more than a third on an oboe is, as far as I’m aware, totally impossible). It could also mean ‘achievable’ in terms of the ability levels of players or the timeframe available to learn something. So you could write a long, densely syncopated microtonal piece for a school string orchestra but it would be somewhat unfair on them unless they were all highly advanced players. Scoring software, sample libraries and keyboard patches can give composers an emulation of something that just would not work in reality, but it can be hard to let go of an idea on that basis once you’ve ‘heard’ it in a virtual way.
The second gulf is more ideological than practical and relates to the unique pressures that both composer and performer respectively face. A composer may feel their work is the only thing an audience is going to judge. After all, they haven’t heard the work before; any wrong notes or rhythmic misfires may be perceived as intentional compositional choices, especially if the work has less conventional tonality or rhythms anyway. But the musicians are on the front line; they have to present your work to an audience. Of course they want to render your musical vision accurately but they also want to express and emote, and hopefully to engage the listeners. If the music they’ve been given has moments where it’s borderline unplayable or unreadable, then frustration is bound to seep in. A narrative can quickly emerge of composer as unworldly overlord, glazing over at the technical reasons why something is unplayable or impractical and telling the musician to ‘just see if you can work something out’. However amiably the composer may make that request, that is quite a big ask.
The solution is obvious. After ensuring they’re grounded in the fundamental techniques of an instrument, a composer should work closely with the musician they’re writing for in a workshop environment (minus the ‘composer jokes’). Together, they can figure out what’s possible and what sounds best. The idea of specifying what string the violinist should play a note on sounds very pernickety and academic until you hear the difference. A human pianist playing septuplets over pentuplets sounds very different to a computer rendering them on Sibelius.
And yet… and yet… This is not always possible. Conflicting schedules, limited arts funding and tight deadlines mean that the first time a composer hears their work being played is often in rehearsal, by which point the focus should have shifted to getting the piece ready for performing, rather than making big amendments.
So what other workarounds are there? I guess YouTube is a fantastic- and free- source of a huge amount of information about most instruments, with lessons, workshops and demonstrations widely available. Reddit’s very active and quite friendly musician communities can also be really helpful in talking through certain practical questions.
Besides the treasure trove of the Internet, another less conventional option is to use any instruments you do know to assist your process. One revelation I had while writing a piece for string quartet was that I could use an old mandolin I had to work out what double stopping chords were feasible on violin. Given how much more delicate the fretting was, I realised firsthand why double stopping perfect 5ths can actually be kind of awkward for violinists and violists. Later, I applied a similar process to writing for cello by detuning the lowest 4 strings of my guitar to standard cello tuning. I was that small amount closer to ‘thinking like a cellist’ as I wrote for the instrument, which can only be a good thing, I guess!
None of these workarounds provide a perfect solution, but it’s at least a gradual inching towards working in the same language. At university, a professor once proclaimed, with an Edenic fatalism, that a composer could not be ‘great’ if they had learnt the piano and, while that statement is obviously absurd, I definitely see the merits for pianist composers in expanding the way we visualise and write music beyond the neat layout of a keyboard.
Ideally, anyone writing a composition for any instrument besides their own would get an afternoon with the musician to sit, drink tea and try out various instrumental techniques with them. But we’re not all Jonny Greenwood. In the meantime we just have to keep writing and use the resources we have. We must also develop thicker skins when it comes to ‘composer jokes’.