Category: Toolbox

Honey, We Need To Talk…



Brian Sacawa asks us to just talk to one another—for the good of the music.

The following is a true story, though certain names and places have been omitted to protect the innocent (or the guilty, depending on your point of view).

Not too long ago, I found myself in an exciting situation. I was to premiere several new compositions by different composers through my involvement with a certain event. Everything was going swimmingly preparation-wise, except for the fact that a week before the performance one of the pieces had still not arrived. Finally, with six days to go, I got the score, which was a duo with another instrumentalist. Let me be completely honest: this was one hard piece. Not only my part, which took the saxophone on a guided tour of the outer reaches of difficult, but also the other player’s part, which looked like a Xenakis score had mated with a piece from Ferneyhough’s catalog. So we had six days until the concert to 1) learn our parts individually and 2) put them together in a convincing fashion.

Although the task at hand was certainly daunting, I was mildly aroused by the proposition. Then something quite inconceivable happened. While rehearsing the piece the day before the concert, the composer became extremely irritated and upset with our performance. I’ve blocked most of the experience out of my memory, but many of the comments were along the lines of “When one person has quintuplets and the other has septuplets, they’re not lining up properly,” “Yeah, um, the second section, where the fives metrically modulate to threes, is a little under-tempo,” and “Why are you having such a hard time with that saxophone part? So-and-so could do all that stuff in a different piece.” Ahem. Perhaps so-and-so had more than four days to learn his part. Perhaps so-and-so didn’t have four other new pieces to prepare at the same time. And—though I’m just guessing here—perhaps so-and-so wanted to strangle you just as much as I do right now.

Now, I like playing hard music, but learning hard music takes time. The situation described above is one example, albeit somewhat extreme, of something that could have been avoided with some good old-fashioned communication. In this instance, I would have assumed that our best effort would have been sufficient, but apparently that wasn’t the case. There was definitely a tense vibe in the room, but the other musician and I held our tongues while receiving our tongue-lashing, knowing that making a scene would not do anything to help remedy a deteriorating situation. Still, here we were giving the music our best effort despite the fact that the deck was clearly stacked against us, and this was the result. Was this situation avoidable? What was this composer thinking? Honestly?

I’ve collaborated with a fair number of composers, from the young emerging kind to the seasoned veteran kind. It’s a role that I delight in. It’s exciting for me to be a part of the creation of new music and to be the conduit for a composer’s vision. This is usually quite an enjoyable experience because most times the composer actively engages me in the creation of his or her piece—asking me to demonstrate things, like what the saxophone can and can’t do, what things I enjoy doing, what unique sounds I can make that might not be in that orchestration manual, and so on. Sometimes they ask me to improvise or to play some pieces that I think are a good representation of the saxophone’s capabilities. I like this. It shows me that even though I’ve chosen to work with them because I want to have their voice represented in the saxophone repertoire, they’re equally as interested in infusing their piece with a bit of my personality and playing style. It’s a textbook tenth grade biology example of a symbiotic relationship.

There are also the composers who don’t actively engage me in the creation of their piece. There’s always an initial communication—”Want to write me a piece?” “Yeah, sure!”—but I’m unsettled by the number of times when that’s where the collaboration ends, a time when it should really be just beginning. Why does this happen? It’s always a mystery to me. There’s no cookie cutter way to ensure that all collaborations move along perfectly—there are so many real life variables that can work their way into any situation—but there are a few guidelines that can help composers and performers have the best possible and most rewarding experience together.

  • Don’t AssumeWith the vast amount of orchestration books and pedagogical manuals available, it’s easy to see why a composer might not feel the need to speak exhaustively with their performer—perhaps the composer might even feel like they’re bothering the performer by asking them questions that could be looked up in a book quite effortlessly. In my experience, this has been one of the biggest factors contributing to a well-intentioned collaboration turning a bit sour. It’s important that composers and performers maintain open communication lines from the beginning.

    Such books and manuals are good sources of information, but they can also be extremely dangerous. Many are outdated and don’t reflect advances made in instrumental technique with regard to even things as obvious as range. For example, Walter Piston’s famous Orchestration (1955) lists the alto saxophone’s highest playable pitch as a concert Ab. Since Piston’s manual was published, not only has the saxophone evolved to include a key that allows it to play a half step higher, but modern players have now become so adept and facile at the instrument’s altissimo range that performing an octave above the Ab in Piston has become commonplace. It’s also important to keep in mind that some manuals, especially those written by accomplished and respected players of their instrument were written with an agenda. If I wrote a book like that, you can be sure that I’d make a persuasive case for all of my favorite tricks and techniques to help shape the direction of the saxophone’s repertoire. (Note to self: Write a book like that.) Along those same lines, many such books have way too much information. Be skeptical of that 200 page book of multiphonics rather than salivating over the possibilities.

    The bottom line is that no book can replace some quality face time with a performer. Take that time to go over some ideas and expectations with regard to the specifics of the instrument and your compositional goals. Ask the performer for a sample of techniques you’re interested in using—have them demonstrate them for you, ask them to burn you a CD and give you some scores in which they feel the techniques are used successfully. If extended techniques are your bag, ask your performers to sit down and make a list of everything they can do. Also request that they make a sample recording so you have a sonic reference guide. As a matter of fact (and performers take note here), it would be great if all performers came with a personalized handbook with an accompanying CD that demonstrated the range of their instrument, its technical possibilities, all the extended techniques they have mastered, as well as any specific individual or unique sounds or techniques they can play. Laying out all the cards on the table from the get go will make the entire process extremely smooth and enjoyable on both ends.

    Here’s an interesting statistic: one hundred percent of the time, the music by the composers that I’ve worked with closely is not only the best, but also the most fun to play. This is not only because by collaborating intimately they understood both the instrument’s and my own idiosyncrasies, but more often than not, through the collaborative process we also forged a friendship. If nothing else, that personal connection with the composer informs and enhances my performance of their music.

  • Be PatientWhen composers finish a piece, their hard work and toil is ending, but for the performer it’s just beginning. Performers need time to learn new music. The performer was not reading over your shoulder while the composition was being penned, so although you are intimate with the piece and all its intricacies, the performer isn’t. We need time to absorb a new piece, both technically and musically. Most all the new music I’ve premiered presents all manner of new technical situations and digital demands—a far cry from predictable and formulaic passages in “older” music that could be studied, practiced, recognized on sight, and then performed with pinpoint accuracy even on a first read through. It takes a little time for a performer to 1) train their fingers to navigate new and foreign technical passages and 2) ingrain those passages to the point where they become comfortable enough to begin bringing out the music that they contain. I’m always uncomfortable when I receive a new work and the composer wants me to read through it for them a day or two (or even sight read it right then and there) while they sit inches away from me. And that’s just the technical side of learning a new piece. Then there’s also the matter of the getting comfortable enough with the piece so that the performer can give it a real voice and life, beyond simply playing the notes and hanging on for dear life. My goal as a performer is always to communicate the piece I’m playing to the audience to the best of my ability, which invariably works out a lot better if I’ve had a chance to let the piece mature. Think of it like whiskey. Now ask yourself if you’d prefer an Early Times performance or a Basil Hayden’s performance.

    Give the performer(s) a day or two to look the piece over. Even just a couple days will probably give them the opportunity to work through the piece from beginning to end a few times and note anything that could possibly need to be tweaked in terms of the instrumental writing, as well as give them a general sense of the scope of the composition. Take this opportunity to talk to the performer and ask them what they think. You are the composer, but try to remain open to editorial suggestions and make sure you’re both clear about your expectations regarding the time it will take for a really outstanding performance. When a performer only has two weeks to prepare a new piece you may still get a professional quality performance. But if a performer has, say, a month to prepare, the resulting performance will probably be closer to the musical and emotional experience the composer envisioned.

  • Be FlexibleNew music performers do not shun difficult music. Quite the contrary, we’re generally eager to dig into new pieces, especially ones that take us into uncharted territory musically as well as technically. Performers spend years working to be in complete command of their instruments and all their faculties. If they’re working with you, chances are good that they’re not looking for a quick and easy way out of learning your piece. Most performers I know, myself included, are excited to work through new technical difficulties and challenges they’ve never encountered—stretching boundaries enables instrumental progress—but there are certain things that are simply not possible or that just don’t work or sound good on a particular instrument. In these instances, deferring to the performers’ expertise is important.

    If composers feel a little trepidation about being so conversant with their performers, it’s understandable. In Western art, we often operate from a “great man” theory of creation, so perhaps there’s a bit of a feeling of I-don’t-need-you-to-tell-me-anything-about-writing-my-piece at play when there’s a communication breakdown between performer and composer. But performers understand the composer’s role: Without composers, we wouldn’t be playing. And, although I’m speaking for myself here I’m pretty sure many other players feel similarly, I really enjoy working with composers closely throughout the entire process. It’s interesting for me to observe a composer’s thought process firsthand, which, even when I see exactly how it’s done, never ceases to amaze me. So if after the initial communication, the composer simply goes back to the lab with a pen and a pad and doesn’t emerge until a completed piece has been produced, I feel kind of shut out. I want to be a part of the process, not to meddle with the composer’s ideas or force the direction of the piece, but just to be a consultant along the way.

    In the real world there are all sorts of things that could throw off even the best laid plans, but this is about trying to make that world a more comfortable place for both composers and performers. New music itself tends to be complicated; but there’s no harm in trying to make its creation and performance a little less so. Communication seems to be the key.

    ***
    Saxophonist Brian Sacawa is active internationally as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. His most recent CD, American Voices, is available on the innova record label. He currently lives in the lush rolling asphalt slopes of Bolton Hill in Baltimore.</

On Babes and Angels

Harp

The harp is to the orchestra what the bosomy babe is to the spy thriller: sensuous, indispensable, and almost invariably ornamental. Why? Its timbral splash is anything but anonymous. And don’t think, in ensemble, it can’t be heard! It’s no harder to balance with full orchestra than solo violin. You’d think an instrument of such glamour, power, and harmonic resource would have inspired a thousand concerti. You’d be wrong. Somehow—while we have no difficulty hearing the harp—we have a devil of a time paying attention to it. “The harp is by nature more harmonic than melodic in feeling: solo melodies played on it are generally thin and ineffective,” warns solemn Kent Kennan in his Technique of Orchestration. Few orchestral composers have disagreed. They’ve conditioned us for centuries to hear the instrument only as accompaniment: the orchestra sings the music, and the harp…decorates it. And, to talk to most—and mostly disgruntled—harpists, composers have been none too respectful about of the harp’s needs and features as they write these largely tangential parts. Talk to a player on the subject of Wagner’s five-note chords (harpists can’t use the little finger, so they can only play four notes per hand at a time), his St.-Vitus’s-dance pedal changes, etc., and by the end of the first drink you’ll understand all too well why, in English, “to criticize—unsparingly, obsessively” is “to harp on.”

You’d think by now that some new orchestral composers would have undertaken a “Free the Harp!'” (From Cliché!) Project: but, in America at least, much new work divides more-or-less into two sorts of music to which the harp itself—let alone the harp concerto— is tragically ill-suited. Allow me to generalize: For convenience, let’s use “minimalism” to describe the newer of those musics; one largely based on the transformation of the ostinato. (Of course much more than this distinguishes Reich from Andriessen from Riley from Wolfe, but you can’t really talk about any of them without talking about pulse.) Obviously the harp can handle this sort of thing harmonically: lots of Glass uses a tonal palette that would have been familiar to Telemann. Nor do the later, Sibelius-under-a-strobe-light stylings of John Adams pose the harp any problem. But, technically, the harp doesn’t do pulse. “Rapid repeated notes on the same string are not very practical,” drones Kennan: “a sudden return to the string only damps out the vibrations of the previous note before they have had a chance to get well started.” Boring, but true. Have you ever heard a performance of In C with a harp beating the underlying pulse?

There’s response to Kennan’s observations. As we all remember from Orchestration I, the harp is built diatonically: that is, it has seven strings to the octave, rather than the expected twelve (one per semitone.) This structure opens up any number of enharmonic tunings that can give the illusion of repeated notes—C-flat and B-natural, F-sharp and G-flat, etc. On the other hand, what do you do with D-natural, G-natural, A-natural? And how comprehensive a solution is this? Generally the pulses we’re talking about are fast, fast, fast. Divvy up the eighth-notes whilst the metronome is jittering away at 168 and you’re still left with quarters at 84—they’ll ring, but unimpressively—and we’re talking about the orchestral harp, now, which means the player is competing with the effortless repeated pitches of virtually every other instrument on the stage. And “early” minimalism’s other device, the arpeggio, is, as a squint at the Italian word will confirm, the very definition of the harp cliché. How surprising can it be to include the harp in the very gestures to which it gave its name hundreds of years ago?

What about the other stream of the new-music river, which we’ll just call chromaticism: by which I’ll look back to include Wagner-as-source; both the French (whole-tone, Impressionist) and German (half-tone, modernist) tributaries which sprang from it; and all the contemporary spawn? God knows there are reams of harp-writing in Ravel and in Strauss, with all their nimble leaping between one lush key-center after another: which, of course, prompts many a manic jig on the harp pedals. (Remember that whenever the music changes keys, the harpist must physically re-pitch the instrument, string by string, into the new key while she’s playing the music.) On the other hand, it’s worth noting that both of those composers frequently bought their way out of the problems their music posed by simply adding a second harpist to the orchestra, which position, despite how composition has progressed, has never become standard in the modern symphony. And where are the major single-harp parts in Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, as well as in their pan-Atlantic heirs? Carter? Boulez? Babbitt and Wuorinen, those sultans of crunch?

This division of new music into chromatic (or post-tonal) and minimalist (hypertonal) is artificial but not useless. Obviously the best new music is fearless of the triad, the pulse, or the row. (The best new music is fearless, period.) But the fact that the style wars are over doesn’t mean they didn’t happen: and that there weren’t real implications for the harp literature. On the other hand, the style wars can’t entirely explain the harp’s continuing marginalization, particularly as a soloist with orchestra. Britten, the very model of the composer who shrugged at dogma, gave us some of the most substantial and moving pages written for harp in the last hundred years: but where’s the Britten harp concerto? (He wrote one for piano.) The Russians, too, almost wholly escaped the temple-clutching, to-key-or-not-to-key question: where’s the Prokofiev, where’s the Schnittke harp concerto? (As opposed to their piano concerti.) Bartók? Ligeti? Corigliano? If, as these have, you can write a contemporary concerto for the piano—an equally percussive, harmonically resourceful (albeit chromatic) instrument—why not do so for the harp?

Because, I suggest, even after you solve the harmony problem you’re still stuck with the problem of attack. Compared to the piano, you have much fewer options! The piano’s sustain pedal gives you minute control over the relative brilliance and duration of the sound. And its resonating soundboard gives it, not only a titanic forte, but also a timbral opacity of which the harp can only dream. In comparison, the harp sound is transparent as glass. Any instrument playing in unison with the harp will overshadow, not shadow, the harp timbre. Write a theme like this:

Example 1

…and, despite the octaves and the note values, what you’ll perceive is a sharp clarinet with a rich golden echo, not a harp solo with clarinet punctuation. This is the issue that endures after you’ve squared away your harmony. It’s not that the harp can’t play a melody. It’s that virtually every other (non-percussion) instrument can play it better.

But soft! Cries the great Carlos Salzedo—harpist, composer, educator, tireless advocate—who literally wrote the book on the harp’s timbral options. The harp has a thousand colors: harmonics, close-to-the soundboard playing, the inventive wielding of the guitar pick, on and on and on. To which I’d reply, yes, they’re all great sounds: but soft! With the exception of the pedal crash (about which more anon,) all of these techniques change the harp’s color but invariably mute the dynamic. This is great in chamber music, or orchestral music that aspires to comparable quietude. But overuse ends up stereotyping the harp as Eustace Tilly, hushing the busy world to inhale deeply on his trembling chrysanthemum. Bring on that alto flute! Cue that muted viola! The harp is back in town, and from now on things are going to be pretty God-damn exquisite around here.

But let’s say that you have an idea for (and have been asked to write) a harp concerto that’s boldly theatrical: your music isn’t intrinsically at odds with what the harp does; and you think all the technical and timbral issues are solvable problems. What are the questions you ask yourself?

Well, after accepting a commission from the National Symphony Orchestra for its principal harpist Dotian Levalier, here were mine:

    • 1.) Since the harp is, by design, more impressive spelling out harmony than theme—but I want a theme with a real authority on which to organize the piece—can I come up with a melody that’s all harmony and all line

at the same time

    • , and yet is still versatile enough to express whatever I need?

 

    • 2.) Are there unusual technical or timbral resources the harp can muster that are theatrical (read:

loud

    • ) enough to hold their own in an orchestral texture? Can I design a movement to ask a question to which these timbres would be the answer?

 

    • 3.) And how do I make this piece

not

    • just an orchestra score which happens to have a

very large

    • harp part, but a true concerto: one which sounds as if all of its gestures and materials are generated by the soloist? In other words, how do I keep the orchestra, with its limitless melodic potential, from upstaging the harp?

 

And here were my answers:

    • 1.)

Theme

    : it couldn‘t be simpler conceptually. The original version of the theme changes harmony on virtually every note: (See Example 2.)
Example 2

Example 2

The idea was that the rapidly changing harmonies would “color” the melody tones in the way registration and attack do in more versatile instruments. This theme isn’t always harmonized in so quicksilver a way: in the third movement, much of a variation on this theme spins out over pedal points in the strings.

Example 3

But by that point the material’s been introduced in its most “harpistic” way, so the variations will sound.

2.) Timbral resources: I chose two; the pedal crash and the tuning-key glissando. If, on certain lower pitches, the pedal controlling the pitch is held midway between two notches while the string is struck, what you’ll here is a sound not unlike electric-guitar feedback; a vibrant, un-pitched metallic growl that can twang in and out of exact pitch as the performer decides.

Example 4
    • When harpist Dotian Levalier first demonstrated this for me, I all but clapped my hands: it was so rich and aggressive and unexpected a sound—so

not

    • classical-music brunch—that I immediately imagined a kind of percussive scherzo in which the harpist could lead a conversation in and out of pitch with instruments in the orchestra making comparable gestures. I’d already written, in my opera

Little Women

    , sections in which strings begin bowing in tune and then, with a forced stroke of the bow, leave pitch for “crunch;” and I knew from other harp literature that if the harp strings were stroked with a tuning key or other metal bar after the string is struck, the resulting sound could exactly resemble certain upward pitch-bending Chinese opera gongs.
Example 5

So the second movement became a timbral etude for both the soloist and the orchestra: a mini-percussion concerto without a percussion soloist.

3.) The orchestra: I simply had it reverse roles with the soloist. If, I reasoned, the problem with conventional harp writing is that all that figuration leads the ear elsewhere—towards whatever is strong or sustained—could I write for the harp as orchestra, and the orchestra as harp? Might, for example, the first movement summon the harp into being with a series of ever the more spiraling arpeggi, culminating at last in a rainstorm of string pizzicato—the closest, in timbre, the orchestra can come to the harp—before the harp itself breaks in, showing the orchestra exactly how arpeggi are done?

Example 6
    • For how much of the movement can I keep the orchestra off the downbeats: so that if you’re listening rhythmically at all, you

have

    to place the harp foreground in your ear because nothing else is playing on the strong beats of the bar? And when the harp spells out that chordal theme from Example 2, can the orchestra surround it with the sort of figuration that the harp might ordinarily play if this were an orchestral theme?
Example 7

This was the sort of thinking that got me started. Then, of course, your intuition takes over. I knew I wanted the theme to be as convincing when it was elaborate as when it was simple. I didn’t know it was going to have such an imperial character when multicolored, and such a benedictory one when plain; but those emotional colors led to the short, almost overture-like first movement, and the extended, prayerful third. The fourth movement was a happy coincidence: I needed another kind of orchestral attack that was engaging but would still cede melodic authority to the soloist: I also hadn’t written an ostinato movement of any kind at all in ten years, and I wanted that kind of insistent joy to close the piece. File under “Two Birds, One Stone.”

And somewhere in the middle of thinking about all of this, it occurred to me that the shape of the piece—symphonic variations, essentially—had a rough analogy to the fairy-tale idea that angels were all of the same substance, albeit of different form: and I thought that the only thing more stereotyped than so much harp writing was those insipid Christmas-card angels with which the harp, aurally, was so often associated. A plunge into the literature revealed that many angelic personae from scriptural myth were as deliciously surprising to me literarily as the pedal crash had been aurally. Thus the title, Four Angels, and the movement plan: colorful enough to be evocative, and roughly analogous to the piece’s path, but not so literary or detailed that the music itself would seem to illustrate, rather than define, the experience.

I’d have composed this piece for cab fare if they’d asked me: I love the harp, and had I died that afternoon in 1995 on which I was turning pages for the harpist playing the Holst Hymns from the Rig Veda—choral contralti in my left ear, harp in my right—I’d have expired in bliss. But I’d be lying if I denied hoping that, if Four Angels is at all what I mean it to be, it might in some tiny way expand our sense of what’s possible to say, and do, through this instrument on the symphonic stage. Who doesn’t love a bosomy babe? But if the babe is a real actor: shouldn’t she have a real role?

***

Mark Adamo
Mark Adamo

Composer/librettist Mark Adamo is principally known for his operas Little Women and Lysistrata. He has also written about music extensively for a variety of publications including The Washington Post, the Star Ledger, Opera News, and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. An extensive conversation with him was published in NewMusicBox in February 2006. His harp concerto Four Angels will receive its premiere at the Kennedy Center on June 7 – 9, 2007 performed by Dotian Levalier and the National Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor.

The Voices in Your Head: Some Thoughts on Choral Music

Mark Winges

Mark Winges

A recent Chorus America report estimates that there are over 250,000 choruses in the U.S.―12,000 (professional and community), 38,000 (school), and 200,000 (church). Those numbers suggest two things to me: 1) there must be something fun/interesting/satisfying about that kind of music making if it attracts so many people, and 2) that’s quite a large group of potential performers for new music.

There’s always room for new good literature in any genre, but composing for chorus can be particularly rewarding. You become part of a truly established tradition, choral concerts have a built-in audience of friends of relatives, and choruses exist everywhere.

Speaking personally, my attraction to choral music is just like my attraction to anything else: nothing sounds quite like it, and it can do things that no other ensemble can do. The following observations and guidelines are a reflection on my own perceptions, and I share them with you in the hope that they will stimulate your own thinking about writing for chorus. Shouldn’t your composing diet include choral music?

A Working Definition

The word “chorus” is often loosely applied to various vocal ensembles, so it might be good to start out with a definition. The classic choral sound consists of multiple singers on a single voice part. While there are excellent one-on-a-part ensembles, multiple voices on a part really defines the choral sound.

Mixed chorus (traditional soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices) is what most people think of when they imagine the choral sound. Treble chorus (soprano and alto voices) and male chorus (tenor and bass voices) are also standard ensemble types. Sometimes treble chorus is used interchangeably with children’s chorus, although not all treble choir music is intended for children. Most of my comments will apply equally to all types of choral music.

A chamber choir (whether mixed, treble, or male) usually numbers between 12 and 20 individual singers, distributed evenly between the voice parts. It may range up to about 30 singers. Larger choruses (up into the hundreds) are actually quite common. In some cases, 8 singers can make a good choral sound, but music with independent lines tends to emphasize the individual voices in an ensemble that small.

Overall Sound and Texture

br-lazy"

Voicing and tessitura are important considerations when writing for chorus.

Voicing that patterns itself after the harmonic series (wide intervals on the bottom, narrow ones on the top) can keep things clear, especially in more complex sonorities. However, this must be weighed against tessitura issues, the most important of which is the tendency of the basses to drop off severely in volume as they get to the lower end of the staff. Chords forte or louder may be unbalanced if the basses are at F (sometimes even G) or lower. At the other end of the scale, high tenor notes may be too prominent in louder dynamics. They have a ring unlike anything else (which can be used to an advantage). In general, at loud dynamics, keep the tessitura conservative for all voice parts if you want pitch clarity throughout. Also, be aware that long passages of unrelieved extreme tessitura (high or low) are fatiguing to sing.

A fundamental aural concept of a chorus is that it is a more diffuse band of sound in comparison to almost any instrumental ensemble. Even simple simultaneous cross-rhythms are often perceived as mere texture. It takes fewer individual notes in a closely voiced chord to produce a dense cluster, but even a single voice part singing a unison line can be a satisfying and complex sound. Two voice parts singing in octaves or twelfths also has a richness all its own.

One of the surest ways to dull choral writing is to have all voice parts singing all the time, especially in homophonic passages. Using fewer voices doesn’t necessarily mean fewer pitches; divisi passages are common throughout the literature. Divisi a 2 is the most natural and is easiest to balance. Many choirs, especially large community choirs, will find divisi among the sopranos and altos a little more manageable than among tenors and basses. Although with more advanced choirs, divisi in all parts is idiomatic. Another way to obtain textural variety is to consider a short passage for solo voice. Incidental solos within the chorus are found frequently.

Pitch Matters

Doubling voices with instruments, especially piano, is not necessarily the best way to ensure pitch stability. Voices in a chorus hear and tune to each other more comfortably than they do to an “external” sound that’s 15 feet away. Tuning with the person next to you happens without too much conscious effort. Remember, it’s a built-in part of our biological equipment to be particularly sensitive to vocal sounds. For any chorus and instrument combination, more independence in the instruments and less straight doubling will result in a better overall sound. A simple reinforcement of important pitches in a line or decoration around the sung material are possibilities to explore.

Note that consecutive wide melodic intervals are difficult to manage vocally, even for professional ensembles. Whether chromatic or diatonic, a preponderance of stepwise motion is more natural for singers. For non-professional choruses especially, consider using repeated patterns or intervallic motion that implies a perceptible harmonic structure. Individual voice parts that are relatively simple melodically can be layered to produce a very complex (and ear-catching) vertical texture.

Chromatic music needs to be notated carefully. Often, you have to choose between being clear vertically and being clear horizontally. Two adjacent chords may be easy to parse individually, but if there’s a leap of a diminished sixth between the two chords in one voice part, for example, you may want to respell. However, if you are only looking at the individual voice line, the altos may glance at the tenor part and miss the fact that their Db is in unison with the tenor C#.

Rhythm Matters

Rhythm must be considered differently when writing for chorus, especially rhythm in an active texture. First, much of the rhythmic activity is determined by text (more about text below). Second, singers sing vowels (this is an oversimplification, but a useful one). The individual notes of a melisma will have a roundness that makes the rhythm less differentiated than the same line would be on a wind instrument, for example. This does not imply any lack of energy in the sound, but will influence the rhythmic perception in the listener. Setting text syllabically is one solution, but to avoid melisma entirely ignores an important musical feature of the chorus as sound.

Choruses frequently sing in acoustically reverberant spaces―more resonant than those used for chamber music. This also diffuses the rhythmic perception. Even in a drier space, choruses (and their directors) have the resonant acoustic in their aural image and will often try to evoke that kind of space.

Here are two tricks I’ve encountered that will sharpen up the rhythmic profile. First, breaking up short phrases of an active texture with silence will heighten the rhythmic effect. Even if it is only a beat or two, a repeated stop-start effect gives the listener a set of guideposts that frame the rhythm. Second, I often see (and use) textures where one voice part is delivering the text while the other parts are humming or singing “ah”. Consider using “ka” or “ta” (or “km” or “tm” for humming) occasionally, either at the phrase or sub-phrase end, or when the pitch changes. “k” and “t” are consonants that carry effectively when sung by a group. They give a much sharper explosion than “b” or “p”.

Another thing to consider is dynamics. For chorus, fast and loud can easily be just loud energy―which may be your intent. There is excitement in a large group of musicians (vocal or instrumental) playing loud, even if the actual decibel level isn’t high: 4 brass players may drown out 40 singers, but the 40 singers communicate something beyond the volume just because of their numbers. However, fast and soft is a marvelous choral texture when done well. Again, 40 singers communicate something very intense when singing a fast texture softly. A classic example: the beginning of “Variation VI—Finale” from Britten’s A Boy Was Born.

Text: Choices

Text is the most important characteristic of any sung sound. However, as composers, our mechanism is sound and making sonic connections, and one’s motivation for writing choral music should be more than just presenting the text. Our job is to illuminate the text, marrying it with music to make something more.

This brings me to a blessing and a curse that is at the heart of choral writing: the best way to ensure the intelligibility of text is to set it homophonically at a moderate tempo. But the sure way to turn listeners off is to have many or all pieces on a choral concert where the text is set homophonically at a moderate tempo. So instead, let me posit a continuum, with absolute clarity of text at one end and no clarity at all at the other. Each piece will fall somewhere along that continuum, and I believe it is our job to constantly rethink this aspect of choral writing carefully, determining where a particular piece (or section of a piece) will fall along that continuum. I think it is a mistake to assume that absolute clarity is desirable all the time.

It can be helpful to ask yourself why or what about a particular text appeals to you. Why do you think this text is important enough to set? Is it the sound of the words? Is it the images? Is it the narrative? Is there a narrative? Is it merely a convenient vehicle for your musical ideas, given that you’re writing for chorus and have to use something? The answers to these questions might help you find a place on the intelligibility scale, and they might also suggest musical character, tempo, gesture, etc. Text can even govern form and flow. Connections in the text at a level beyond the individual words or individual poetic lines can suggest musical connections. Don’t settle for just setting line after line of text with your eyes closed (as it were).

It’s probably best to avoid declamatory, information-leaden texts. They will push you toward the “must be intelligible at all times” end of the continuum, and thus may limit your musical choices. At the other end of the scale, intensely personal texts can be a challenge; such texts are effective when sung by a soloist, but can become mawkish when sung by a choir. I used to have a rule (which I’ve relaxed) that I didn’t set texts for chorus that included the word “I”.

The use of traditional Latin texts, especially mass parts, can be problematic. I have seen Kyrie settings where the text choice seemed offhand, as if the composer felt “oh, that’s what choruses do”. Remember, our job is to illuminate the text. If you are writing for a liturgical setting and aren’t specifically asked to write a mass, consider less well-known texts: a passage from the book of Revelation, Hildegard of Bingen (try the original Latin), Mechtild of Magdeburg, a passage from one of the Old Testament prophets (perhaps in Hebrew). Also consider a troped text, where lines of the original text are interspersed with commentary on that text. Or create your own trope by mashing one text up with another.

For something truly new, consider collaborating with a poet, having someone write a new text specifically for your piece. Poets are less familiar with writing on commission or to order, but many of them will welcome the challenge. Although the poet’s work will probably be done before you start yours, a made-to-order text means there is some flexibility: you can go back and ask for a rewrite (perhaps to get some more words with a “k” sound to emphasize your rhythmic idea), work with the poet if you need to truncate text, or ask for more text as your piece develops. I’ve done this several times, and I found the process both stimulating and educational.

You may be surprised at how different poets regard their words. Just as we composers are all up and down the spectrum concerning our notes (some of us are very tied to the notes we write, others don’t mind so much if they get jostled around a bit by the performers), so are poets with their words. Some feel that their text must come through. Others are more concerned with mood or flow. In any case, it is an interesting topic for discussion between you and your poet-collaborator. And what better way to get into a text than having the author right in the room with you (or at the other end of the email chain).

And finally, if the choral sound appeals to you as pure sound, treat it that way by omitting text altogether. Invent your own “language” or just use phonemes that have no meaning. This approach isn’t for everyone, and some directors are put off by such pieces, but it can be an intense experience to bury yourself in the choral sound divorced from word meaning. Even if you don’t write an entire piece using phonemes, there might be a situation where that’s just the ticket for a section of a piece.

Text: Practical Considerations

Be aware that text is mostly lost at the extreme registers. Vowel sounds more or less merge together once the sopranos get up into the ledger lines. Low basses can keep words well-defined as they rumble down into the ledger lines, but pitch starts to lose a central focus as they get low, in addition to the dynamic problem mentioned above.

For basic non-text passages, such as “ah” or “m”, normal letters can be used. However, if you have extended passages (or a whole piece) that uses phonemes, consider notating it using IPA symbols (International Phonetic Alphabet). Not only will you have more precise control over the resultant sounds, but it will be easier for the performers as well. Most trained singers are familiar with IPA symbols. Also, there are many IPA fonts available (some free). Alfred Blatter’s Instrumentation and Orchestration (see “Resources” below) has a basic table of IPA symbols; Google “IPA font” for the latest information and sources.

Always obtain permission to use any text that isn’t in the public domain before you start working. See Stephen Paulus’s “Before You Set Those Words to Music” for specific guidance on negotiating the legal authorization to set text that is under copyright.

Score Practicalities

Choral singers almost always read from a score. If your piece is for chorus and piano, everyone reads from the score. If you are writing a piece for chorus and only a few instruments, full scores are fine for the chorus. The one exception is a large orchestra piece with chorus, where you sometimes encounter one-line individual voice parts. Singers hate this. Best is a reduced score, which includes not only all the voice parts, but also a one- or two-staff cue line. The cue line may be laid out as a piano reduction, which is also useful in rehearsal situations.

There’s no hard and fast rule about including a piano reduction as a rehearsal aid for unaccompanied choral pieces. However, its inclusion may imply that you sanction a performance of your piece with piano doubling the voice parts (the “for rehearsal only” next to the reduction staves notwithstanding). Whether to include one or not may also be dictated by the content of your piece. If your music contains tongue clicks, whispered, spoken, and other non-pitched material, many glissandi, or if the writing is such that the resultant reduction is mostly unplayable, a reduction has limited usefulness.

If you do include a reduction, spend some time making it piano-friendly if possible: redistribute the notes so they fit into both hands, simplify where complex voice leading/overlapping creates fussy keyboard writing, and omit a few notes here and there if they’re beyond reach. Letting your notation program create your reduction is a timesaver, but that is only the first step.

Singers usually hold their music and only rarely use music stands. This means that large size and landscape format scores are awkward. Traditional for chorus is octavo size is (6¾ x 10½), but I’ve never encountered an objection to plain old 8½ x 11 (or A4). If your piece includes handclaps or some other technique where one or both hands need to be free, mention in the front of the score that the chorus will need music stands. One thing to note in this regard is that children’s choirs usually perform from memory, which eliminates the stand issue.

A related problem is the number of pages in a score. If your piece is long and contains a lot of divisi, you’ll end up with a thick score that is fatiguing to hold. I frequently start by notating my piece on eight staves (SSAATTBB), then go back and collapse to fewer staves where there are passages that are non-divisi, or where the divisi is such that a single voice part can be notated clearly on one staff. Obviously, a different staff layout for each system makes for a confusing score, but if there is an extended passage that can be reduced, your singers will appreciate your effort to cut down on the number of pages. Consider using a smaller staff size than you would for an instrumental piece. Singers are not limited by the distance to the music stand; they can hold the score closer to their eyes. This may allow you to get multiple systems on a page and reduce the number of pages.

Resources: Recommended Books and CDs

Orchestration books are notoriously spotty on the voice and especially the chorus. One that does cover the voice is Alfred Blatter’s Instrumentation and Orchestration (Macmillan, 1997 [2nd edition] ISBN-13: 978-0028645704). Another (older and expensive—check your library) is Andrew Stiller’s Handbook of Instrumentation (Univ of California Press, 1985, ISBN-13: 978-0520044234). There is one survey of recent choral literature: Nick Strimple’s Choral Music in the Twentieth Century (Amadeus, ISBN-13: 978-1574671223). It’s comprehensive, available in paper, and is relatively inexpensive.

Some excellent anthology CDs:

  • The Dale Warland Singers are no more (alas!), however their recorded legacy is still available from Gothic Recordings. Of particular interest: Bernstein & Britten (also includes works by Paulus, Albright, and others) and Reincarnations (Fine, Avshalomov, Finney, Barber and Ives). Also, check out Choral Currents from Innova Recordings (Barnett, Franklin, Hodkinson, Larsen, and others)
  • Gregg Smith has been a friend of composers for a long time. His 20th Century Choral Music in Space is a fine anthology (Druckman, Talma, Hawley, Gould, and others), and his I Hear America Singing (Rorem, Schuman, Talma) is also worth seeking out.
  • Of Eternal Light from Musica Sacra is a wonderfully diverse collection, ranging from Monk (Meredith, not Thelonious) to Messiaen. Also includes works by Ricky Ian Gordon, Kim Sherman, and Robert Moran. And you get the Ligeti Lux Aeterna, a true masterwork of choral literature.
  • Masters of 20th Century A Cappella, Danish National Radio Chamber Choir, directed by Stefan Parkman on Chandos: masterful choral writing beautifully performed; includes works by Schoenberg, Poulenc, Henze, Lidholm and Nørgård.
  • Colors of Love, Chanticleer (Teldec), a fine cross-section of new music: Steven Stucky, John Tavener, Bernard Rands, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Augusta Read Thomas, and Steven Sametz.
  • Baltic Voices (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3, separate CDs), Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, directed by Paul Hillier (harmonia mundi): also wonderful samplers; composers range from Górecki to Pärt to Rautavaara to Saariaho.

The following choruses have a strong commitment to living composers. Their websites (especially their repertoire pages) will suggest further listening:


Special thanks to composers Elliott Gyger and Stacy Garrop, and especially to conductor Robert Geary for their thoughtful discussions and input to this article.


Mark Winges has been resident composer/advisor for Volti (formerly The San Francisco Chamber Singers) since 1990, and has written works for them ranging from a cappella to chorus and chamber orchestra. His choral works have also been performed by the Piedmont Children’s Choir, the San Francisco Girl’s Chorus, the Pharos Music Project (NY), Carmina Slovenica (Slovenia), the Guangdong Choir (China) and many others.

Your Administrative Muse: Task-Management Strategies for Composers



Lisa Bielawa
Photo by Azzurra Primavera

Let’s face it—no one ever said that musically inclined people are all mysteriously endowed with the concomitant administrative and organizational skills required to make musical ideas a reality in these complex times. Email and the internet have arguably increased our productivity, but no one ever explains how the human organism itself can adapt to such new heights of efficiency. Yes, the machines can do more, but can we?

Maybe you write music with no angst, but when you start thinking about the hoops you need to jump through to get a score or a letter of inquiry out the door you get hives (or you open a beer and that next Netflix envelope). Or maybe you feel like all you ever do is drop scores and letters of inquiry in the mail and then find that when you sit down at the piano or your work desk, all you can think about is that other package you have yet to send. Unless you are comfortable with a) never catching much-needed opportunities for your work to be heard or b) writing an opera about sending packages, you have a brain-cell management issue. Welcome to the club.

I don’t have The Answer. But I have had many of the problems, and I am discovering ways—through experimentation and desperation—to navigate through many of these challenges more effectively. Here are some strategies that have helped me the most.

Know your own cycle. Do you write best between 6 and 9 a.m.? Do you prefer to have one whole day to devote to it? Analyze the demands of the rest of your life, both external (paying bills, doing your money gig, calling your sister) and internal or self-generated (sending that string quartet score to the nice violinist who asked to hear your stuff, asking for that letter of recommendation, researching grant programs that might help you get to that performance of your saxophone and marimba piece in Toronto). Experiment with your schedule, to the degree that this is possible, to find out when and how these other things can be accomplished without giving up your golden hours. Analyze how alert you need to be to do a task. The less sophisticated the task, the better candidate it is for your worst time of day. If I’m not sleepy when I get home from the fun party, I might be caught spiral-binding. What else is my mind suited for at a time like that? But I’m a morning person. You may get home from that same party inspired and full of energy, so you should sit down at the piano. Your spiral binding will take place tomorrow morning while you are making coffee, and while I (across town, split screen) am already at work at the piano.

Readiness is all. For the self-published composer, the wave of the present is to work with a music printing service like subitomusic.com for score duplication. If you go this route, they keep .pdf files of your pieces on file and will prepare scores on-demand for not much more than it costs to produce the average do-it-yourself-at-Kinko’s score. I, however, am still more of a 20th-century composer and do my own photocopying. Every time I send out materials, I check my pile to see if I have everything I might need for a while. If I don’t, then before I go to the copy place for one task, I go through and see which pieces I’m running low on and make three or four copies of each.

Join forces. One popular way of handling the perennial self-motivation quandary of exercising is to get a personal trainer or go running with a friend. This method makes us accountable to someone besides ourselves for our workout, even though the overarching motivation is its private benefit. Some administrative and organizational tasks can be handled this way too. Make a grant-research or envelope-stuffing date with a colleague. Maybe your friend is lousy at printing out nice-looking materials but great at making phone calls and asking difficult questions. Your hands may get clammy on the phone, but perhaps you design a mean spreadsheet. Even if you are both good at the same things, making a date to do them at the same time will ensure that you will actually spend that time doing them, which frees up your brain both before and after.

Make your lists. Whether you use paper or software to make your to-do list, make sure you can break it down into easily conceptualized categories—by project or by kind (financial, new opportunities, filing, household)—so that it’s less overwhelming. Even separating it into an A list and a B list can be helpful, especially as you start organizing projects.

E-Triage. Email management is one of the most talked about stresses of modern life. Everyone I know is bemoaning the amount of time they spend dealing with email. Here is my method, which seems to be working so far: If something in the inbox can be handled right away, I just do it. After answering it, I file it in an email sub-folder to get it out of my inbox and help keep my messages manageably organized. If it’s something that needs to be answered with more attention and care than I can muster without some thought, or that needs attention beyond a mere response (a phone call, a package, a document), I leave it in the inbox until I can answer it. (After which I file it and get it out of my inbox). If something in the inbox needs special attention and is very time-sensitive, I flag it and also incorporate it into my A-list of things to do so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. This method ensures that everything in my inbox is waiting for my attention, and everything that no longer needs requires action is no longer visible.

When overwhelmed, always weigh your priorities. “Eek! There are six different grant programs with deadlines of January 15, and I need letters and recordings and scores for all of them! And it’s January 13!” Are some of these quarterly? Read the fine print on all of them before starting any of them. Are you and your project really eligible for all of them? In a pinch, three strong applications are more likely to yield interest in your work than six shoddy ones. Start keeping a calendar with future grant deadlines identified much further in advance. Then cut yourself some slack and get to work on those three, starting with either the gnarliest or the most important or the one most likely to yield results. Just because something made it onto your list this week doesn’t mean that, on further reflection, it needs to stay there. We’d like to think that everything on the list is just as important as every other thing, but when this assumption gets oppressive, it’s time to reassess.

Multi-task selectively. Not everyone is cut out to do all varieties of tasks on top of one another. Sometimes multi-tasking can become a whole mode of experience, and I find that I become less effective when I work this way for too long. Promise yourself some non-multi-tasking time every day. This can be either work time or down time, as long as it is one-thing-at-a-time time (remember, sometimes we even multi-task our leisure activities!). Some tasks fare just as well in combination with others: eating, printing stuff, preparing materials and packages, walking/talking, laundry, sorting, some phone calls. Other tasks are best focused on one at a time: eating (people are generally of two minds about this), much email correspondence, writing proposals and application materials, important phone calls, making your lists of things to do. Effective multi-tasking can show up in strange places: I’ve found that I work out compositional ideas while running, for example.

Space—the final frontier. We’ve all been told that if we live and work in the same space, living space and workspace should be separate. Many of us who live in big cities have to manage tiny apartments, so this advice can be hard to follow. I have found that if your life is, by necessity, a rather integrated flow of different demands and kinds of attention, it is best to let your space reflect that. Books I read for pleasure in the morning while making coffee live in the kitchen. Study scores and books for inspiration live near the piano. Books for which I need to get text permissions live by the office desk. Depending on what I’m using my laptop for, I will carry it to different rooms. Paying bills? Office area. Blogging about my current project? At the piano. Writing a grant application? On the sofa with a cup of tea. I do a certain kind of thinking well in each of these parts of my apartment, and the advent of the laptop makes it possible for me to range freely among them for optimum productivity and mental comfort.

Be a human being. One of the great myths among freelance creative people is that more structure (in time and space management, and perhaps in composition as well) is always good. We are not machines. The value of unstructured time and space is a relatively new discovery for me, and I find that not only is it making me feel better equipped for the logistical challenges of such an existence, it is actually making me happier all around (which, in turn, makes me more productive and more clear-headed in all of my endeavors). Unstructured time is a way of courting serendipity, and serendipity is the friend of creativity. Creativity in task management needs serendipity too, even if it is less glamorous than musical creativity. Let your administrative muse emerge!

***
Lisa Bielawa is “Music Alive” composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Artistic Director of the MATA Festival. She is currently at work on Chance Encounter, for soprano Susan Narucki and 12 instruments in transient public spaces, under the auspices of a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. In 2007 the Tzadik label will release a CD of her music on the Composers Series.

Escaping the Nutcracker Suite: Composing for the 21st Century’s Piccolo Player

Just as the turn of the last century brought “The Golden Age of the Piccolo” with its cornucopia of birdlike solos, we have ushered in the new millennium with a renaissance of the piccolo as a solo instrument. In the past, the piccolo has acted as the flash and thunderbolts in an exciting orchestral score or as the comic relief in lighter fare. Rarely before has its lyrical side been utilized, but the times are changing and composers are challenging the clichéd use of this highest member of the flute family. For the past two decades, proponents of the piccolo have been commissioning and performing new solo works in America and Europe, and composers are increasingly using the instrument as a mellifluous solo voice in chamber and orchestral writing.

A History of Solo Piccolo Performance

Between 1889 and 1930, over 1200 piccolo solos were composed and performed in outdoor bandstands across the country and in Europe. During this “Golden Age,” the piccolo was the second most popular solo instrument, surpassed only by the cornet (R. Roberto: The Golden Age of the Piccolo). By the mid-20th century, however, solo piccolo performances became scarce. With the rediscovery of Antonio Vivaldi in the 1950s, the composer’s sopranino recorder concerti were given their American premieres as piccolo solos. His Concerto in A Minor was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra with my former teacher John C. Krell as soloist. Philadelphia Inquirer critic Edwin H. Schloss called the piccolo concerto a “rare phenomenon at any symphonic concert…in which the cheerful and antic solo instrument is supported by the strings in a style to which it has rarely been accustomed.” Schloss claimed, “Krell gave it an expert performance and the audience warmly endorsed the experiment.”

Newly composed works for the piccolo as a viable solo instrument did not begin in earnest until 1973 when Vincent Persichetti penned his Parable for solo piccolo. In 1975, Buffalo Philharmonic piccoloist Lawrence Trott saw the scant amount of music available for the instrument as a challenge to overcome, so he spearheaded the commissioning of many new works under the auspices of his new organization, The Piccolo Society. The best of these commissions by Michael Horwood, David Loeb, and P.D.Q. Bach became part of the first full piccolo and piano recital in New York City.

Current Trends

Continuing on Trott’s initiative, in the last fifteen years piccoloists like Jan Gippo of the St. Louis Symphony and Zart Dombourian-Eby of the Seattle Symphony, along with the piccolo committee of the National Flute Association, have been promoting the piccolo as a solo instrument by commissioning, performing, and disseminating works to the national flute community. Some composers—like Martin Amlin, Avner Doman, and Marilyn Bliss—found breakthrough success writing quality solo works for piccolo. Other composers—such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mike Mower, Katherine Hoover, Brian Ferneyhough, Thea Musgrave, and Gary Schocker—have helped fuel the renaissance.

Along with Vincent Persichetti and his Parable (based on a Christmas hymn by Milton), works that are becoming standards in the literature include:

  • Michael Daugherty, The High and the Mighty (American pop culture meets the bossa nova)
  • Daniel Dorff, Sonatine de Giverny (Neo-Impressionistic tonal painting)
  • Leoš Janáček, March of the Bluebirds (Slovakian folk-styled march)
  • John La Montaine, Sonata (classic sonata form visiting all twelve keys)

World-class flute soloist Sir James Galway made contributions to the renaissance by recording Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra on the RCA label. This work has been performed by the orchestral piccoloists of Baltimore, Dallas, and Los Angeles. Nationally recognized flute soloists Ransom Wilson and Paula Robison have added piccolo to their recitals at venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. These performances have helped the classical music audience gain a greater awareness of the instrument.

The Instrument

A conical bore, wooden piccolo is the preferred choice for professionals. It typically has more even intonation and tone quality throughout the registers then the cylindrical-bored instrument. Piccolos are also available in silver and resin. The piccolo is a much more difficult instrument to control than the flute. For some players and instruments, the pitch tendencies of the piccolo follow the flute; others have opposite tendencies. Each instrument has individual notes that are uniquely pitched. Add to this the tuning and tonal problems that stem from dynamic changes and varied lip pressure, which is effected by nervousness, and you have one unpredictable little instrument.

The Field

The flutist doubler is the primary professional performer on the instrument today, yet many doublers are not experienced with the alternate fingerings needed to play a piccolo better in tune, nor have they gained the flexibility of embouchure for precise control. Flutists are discovering the need to handle the ever-increasing demands of this doubling instrument, since the use of piccolo in larger chamber music compositions has sizably increased in the last fifteen years. Luckily, due to technical improvements made in the production of the instrument over the same period, the basic performance level of the piccolo player has improved. Some flutists are specialists on the instrument, and for clarity I’ll refer to this professional as a piccoloist. Since flutists with a strong piccolo background are more marketable than those without, piccolo instruction has recently become specialized too. New master’s degree programs in piccolo performance have been established by piccoloists Laurie Sokoloff and Jan Gippo at Peabody Conservatory and Webster University, respectively. Even though these programs are small, they are impressive; in the first four years of the program, two out of three of Peabody’s graduates have found orchestral placement.

Composing for the Piccolo as Compared to the Flute

Composing for the piccolo is not unlike composing for the flute, except the instrument plays an octave higher than notated. The pitch, tone, and volume controls of the piccolo are either amplified or magnified as compared to the flute. The upper register can lead an entire orchestra; the bottom register, conversely, can be covered over.

Unlike the flute, the piccolo does not have a low C-sharp or C. Past orchestral scores by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Benjamin Britten mistakenly included low C, and many composers have followed suit. This is possibly following the inexact recommendations of Hector Berlioz in his book on orchestration which, as Jan Gippo noted in his January 1997 article “Piccolo Misconceptions” for Flute Talk magazine, claimed that the piccolo “has the same range as the flute.”

Technique is the same on piccolo as on the flute, although the smaller finger motion can make technical passages easier. The piccolo uses less air than the flute but a greater speed of wind. High register notes from G upward in any dynamic are difficult for the average flutist to sustain because of the increased wind speed needed to achieve the note.

Unlike the flute, the piccolo does not have a command of notes above C3, five ledger lines above the staff. Certain professionals can now “punch out” C#3, but don’t write for a sustained one unless your looking for artist’s reproach, something that Joan Tower recently discovered when working on her consortium commission for 65 small-budget orchestras, Made in America. The piece challenged the amateur and the freelancing professional piccoloist alike with some stratospheric playing. Usually much of the one-on-one collaboration between a professional performer and a composer is worked out behind the scenes before a single premiere. In this case, multiple piccolo players inquired whether the part was beyond their capabilities or simply unplayable. Sensitive to the limitations of the instrument and the player, Tower has since written the problematic phrase down an octave.

A common mistake made by composers in chamber writing is part assignment. Many times the piccolo is in the first flutist’s book when there are two parts. In the typical chamber setting, it is still the second chair who doubles on the piccolo.

The Amateur’s Limitations

Technical and range limitations and pitch problems are common. Typically amateurs are afraid to stick out as too loud or out of tune in the upper register, so they hold back, which increases their problems with tone production and with pitch. Amateur piccolo players can rarely control more than one dynamic level, and it’s an even split between those who play forte and those who play softer. Since the wider the dynamic range the more difficult it is to tune with others, most piccoloists have as their widest dynamic range piano to mezzo-forte or mezzo-piano to forte. Misconceptions about the limitations of the piccolo are supported by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which lists as its entry for piccolo: “a small shrill flute whose range is an octave higher than that of an ordinary flute.” A shrill tone quality might be produced by some inexperienced performers, but the piccoloist strives for a flute-like sound.

Samples of New Compositions Using the Multifaceted Piccolo

[All recordings were performed by the author on a wooden, conical-bored, Anton Braun piccolo made in Germany]

Different ranges of the piccolo highlight different tonal aspects. From the D below the staff to the octave above (D1-D2) is what I refer to as the woodsy sound. The piccolo can produce an eerie, hollow quality resembling a wooden flute or an innocent and simple sound like the fife. It can also be played to sound rich and sumptuous.

Listen to a sample from Allen Krantz’s Song of Spring for piccolo and guitar

Allen Krantz’s Song of Spring with Little Variations and Fantasies
© 2002 Theodore Presser Company
Used with permission of the publisher.
Performed by Lois Bliss Herbine, piccolo and Allen Krantz, guitar
CD713 recording copyright Crystal Records 2004.
Used here with permission. Unauthorized reproduction is not permitted.

Orchestrations using the tender-qualitied low register are best presented with minimal accompaniment since it is easy to mask the piccolo in this range. Sometimes this relatively uncommon presentation creates the effect that the sound is emanating from somewhere else, and listeners can be deceived as to what instrument is producing it. The piccolo solos from Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, David Finko’s Piano Concerto, and Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite are excellent examples of accommodating accompaniments.

Listen to the piccolo solo in David Finko’s Piano Concerto

David Finko’s “Moses,” Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1971)
Used with permission of the composer and Theodore Presser Company
Performed by Orchestra 2001 (Marcantonio Barone, piano soloist; Lois Herbine, piccolo; Allison Herz, clarinet) at Lang Hall, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, on November 21, 2004.

The sweetest and most beautiful tones of the piccolo extend roughly from D on the third line to the B above the staff (D2-B2).

Listen to a sample from Daniel Dorff’s Sonata de Giverny for piccolo and piano

Daniel Dorff’s Sonatine de Giverny
© 2000 Theodore Presser Company
Used with permission of the publisher.
Performed by Lois Bliss Herbine, piccolo and Charles Abramovic, piano.
CD713 recording copyright Crystal Records 2004. Used here with permission. Unauthorized reproduction is not permitted.

This middle register projects well in forte. Here are various dynamic levels and moods from angry to calming in The Tempest.

Listen to a sample from James Primosch’s The Tempest

James Primosch’s “Songs and Dances” from The Tempest
© 1998 Theodore Presser Company
Used with permission of the publisher.
Performed by Orchestra 2001 (Lois Herbine, piccolo; Alison Avery, viola; Lori Barnet, cello; Sophie Bruno, harp; and William Kerrigan, percussion) at Trinity Center for Urban Life, Philadelphia, PA, on April 22, 2006.

When composing for the fireworks and the soaring runs, and the forte dynamic that can cut through the orchestra, focus on the top octave of the instrument (C2-C3).

In the beginning of this example the flute reaches its sixth ledger line D along with the piccolo, written an octave lower. Notice the similar tone quality of the two instruments in unison. The piccolo then separates for its top octave.

Listen to a sample from David Crumb’s Variations for Cello and Chamber Ensemble

David Crumb’s Variations for Cello and Chamber Ensemble
© 1993 Theodore Presser Company
Used with permission of the publisher.
Performed by Orchestra 2001
Used by permission New World Records CD# CRI 847, year 2000.
© 2006 Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc.

A good way to bolster a melody line is to utilize the piccolo. Here we have the piccolo, flute, two clarinets and trumpet sounding the primary theme, but the piccolo and trumpet dominate:

Listen to a sample from David Finko’s Violin Concerto

David Finko’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra “Nightmares of St. Petersburg” (1988)
Used with permission of the composer and Theodore Presser Company
Performed by Orchestra 2001
Used by permission New World Records CD# CRI 899, year 2002
© 2006 Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc.

A piccolo in its upper octave can not be over orchestrated. Due to its high frequency, both it and the trumpet can can ride on top of the full orchestra at any dynamic level.

Listen to a sample from Behzad Ranjbaran’s Seven Passages for orchestra

Behzad Ranjbaran’s Seven Passages for orchestra
© 2000 Theodore Presser Company
Used with permission of the publisher.
Performed by the Reading Symphony Orchestra at the Sovereign Performing Arts Center, Reading, PA, on November 18, 2006.

Shostakovich and Mahler also wrote beautifully for the extremes of the instrument in their symphonies— soaring runs, the soft chordal writing with the piccolo on top, the poignant and rich low register solos. Studying scores of Shostakovich’s 5th, 6th, 9th, and 10th symphonies, and Mahler’s 1st, 2nd, and 4th would be a good continuation for understanding the piccolo’s capabilities and how it blends and contrasts with other instrumentation.

Use of Extended Techniques

All the extended techniques that flutists employ are available to the piccolo player. Flutter tonguing, singing-playing, multiphonics, microtones, key clicks, microtonal trills, air sounds, timbral notes, are all possible. It is customary for composers to give directions in the music on how to obtain the sounds for some of these latter methods.

Listen to a sample from Michael Daugherty’s The High and the Mighty (singing and playing, flutter-tonguing)

Michael Daugherty’s The High and the Mighty
© 2000 peermusic
Used with permission of the publisher.
Performed by Lois Bliss Herbine, piccolo and Charles Abramovic, piano
CD713 recording © Crystal Records 2004. Used here with permission. Unauthorized reproduction is not permitted.

Pitch bending works even better than on the flute because the piccolo has wide pitch fluctuations, sometimes a half -step on a single note! This has to be manipulated by rolling rather than keying because unlike the flute, piccolos do not have open holes.

Pitch bending with headjoint alone

Listen to a sample from Tan Dun’s Circle with Four Trios

Pitch bending with headjoint and stick

Listen to a sample from Tan Dun’s Circle with Four Trios

Tan Dun’s Circle with Four Trios, Conductor and Audience
Used with permission of G. Schirmer, Inc.
Performed by Orchestra 2001 (Lois Herbine, piccolo; Dorothy Freeman, oboe; Allison Herz, clarinet; Miles B. Davis, bass; William Kerrigan, percussion) at the Annenberg Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, on Sept. 17, 2005.

The first example above uses pitch blending on the headjoint by rolling. The second sample demonstrates wider pitch changes by inserting an implement into the end of the headjoint. The piccolo is so small that a finger cannot be inserted in the open end to change the pitch like on the flute, nor can it be capped with the palm of the hand. Inserting a small rod with a tapered end, such as a small artist’s brush works the best to create this effect.

My Advice to Composers

Instruments with similar timbres and close harmonies to the piccolo—like the upper register of the piano, trumpet, oboe, clarinet, and the bells—work very well in tandem with the instrument. The E-flat clarinet is probably the closest cousin timbrally, but the intonation differences between instruments are constantly problematic; still, much orchestral writing is for this combination. Displaced harmonies such as piccolo with bass, tuba, and bassoon are good combinations. My favorite unusual alliances are piccolo with viola, English horn, or guitar.

I suggest avoiding extended use of the highest three notes of the instrument (the B-flat, B, and C3) for sustained play unless you are writing for a particular piccoloist. The same goes with piano dynamics above an F3. I would advise against writing sustained piano for any level player over an A3. Arnold Schoenberg wrote an extended pianissimo B3 for piccolo in his Gurrelieder which sends piccoloists looking for alternatives, such as whistles or tuning machines that can play the pitch.

Another suggestion is to keep the forte high register material separate from the low piano music; in other words, don’t evolve from one to the other in the same phrase. Also, do not write crescendos or diminuendos on one note that range from pianissimo to fortissimo. The few piccoloists who follow these exaggerated dynamic levels need to make adjustments to their embouchures and their fingerings for the extreme ranges. Giving a physical break in the music for the performer to recover and adjust would be most welcomed.

There is an increased demand for players who are flexible enough to handle both solo flute and piccolo. Concerti written for both flute and piccolo by Bright Sheng, Gunther Schuller, and Shulamit Ran were written for piccoloists or new music specialists. If writing for more than one flute family instrument, I suggest doing this with a particular performer in mind. While programmatically the variety seems successful, many solo flutists will pass on performances that include a piccolo movement and some piccoloists prefer to have an entire concerto written for their instrument.

Reasons to Compose for the Piccolo

Over the last two years statistics from the Newly Published Music Committee of the National Flute Association show that the music published for piccolo, including the piccolo used in flute choir, roughly constitutes one-third of all compositions published for the flute family. While there are still more flutists than piccoloists and more works commissioned for the flute, the piccolo is an attractive instrument to compose for considering its vastly limited repertoire in relationship to the flute. Piccolo solos are still considered cutting edge, and grant money and the press tend to focus on the new rather than the traditional.

Piccoloist Regina Helcher, who has commissioned works for solo piccolo, thinks there is still a void of chamber music solos. “Piccolo and string trio or quartet is a combination that works very well,” she notes. “I think this would be the next great avenue to travel through with commissioning for the piccolo.”

Most importantly, composers must now look past the stereotypes and treat the piccolo with the same versatility as the flute, with dramatic, passionate, flashy, earthy and beautiful facets. Maybe with an ever increasing output we can eventually dub the start of the new millennium as the “Platinum Age of the piccolo.”


Lois Bliss Herbine

Lois Bliss Herbine
Photo by Paul Sirochman

All six accompanied solos from Lois Bliss Herbine‘s CD of premiere recordings for solo piccolo Take Wing (Crystal Records, 2004) have been broadcast on various radio stations across the United States and received favorable reviews from Gramophone and Music Web International. In 2002 she commissioned her guitarist/partner Allen Krantz to write the piccolo and guitar duet Song of Spring, which is published by Theodore Presser Co. and featured on an Ideastation’s radio play list for “guitar and unusual instruments” (followed by Gyorgy Kurtag’s A Kis Csava for piccolo, trombone, and guitar). Herbine has performed orchestral premieres of music by Gunther Schuller, Andrea Clearfield, Peter Schickele, Melinda Wagner, David Finko, and Bernard Hermann. She has recorded the music of Gerald Levinson for the Albany label and with Orchestra 2001 for their “Music of Our Time” series for CRI. Herbine has also recorded commercial soundtracks for television and radio specials, theme music, and commercials. She has written for the national trade magazines Flute Talk and The Flutist Quarterly and contributed to Bonnie Blanchard’s Music for Life series, published by Indiana University Press in 2007. Herbine has begun giving lectures and masterclasses this season, including a residency for the first annual International Piccolo Symposium.

Deal or No Deal: A Grand Rights Primer



Jack Vees
Photo by Michael Marsland

Many composers think that if you join ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, you’ll never have to worry again about receiving some financial compensation for performances of your music. These agencies will collect the money for you, and you’ll get regular checks in the mail whenever and wherever your work gets played.

Performing rights societies, however, are only responsible for collecting and distributing what is defined legally as “small rights.” Small rights fees constitute composer and publisher royalties on everything from a 30-second solo piccolo etude to a 90-minute symphony (which doesn’t sound so small). This includes everything from live performances to radio broadcasts and even cellphone ringtones. But it doesn’t take into account every possible use of your music. What happens if a performance of your music also involves a couple of dancers, or costumes, sets, and maybe even a dramatic scenario? You may have just entered the mysterious realm of “grand rights,” and also left the comfort of the collective bargaining model for a much more volatile and freewheeling economic environment.

To some composers, the phrase “grand rights” evokes no mystery at all. They or their publishers negotiate them every day with presenters, producers, festival directors, and so forth, and every week or so they take the fruits of them to the bank. For many of us, though, it is a hazy concept that we sometimes hear or read about in the back pages of our performing rights organizations’ pamphlets. To quote ASCAP’s licensing agreement:

A dramatic performance shall include, but not be limited to the following: performance of a dramatico-musical work (as hereinafter defined) in its entirety; performance of one or more compositions from a dramatico-musical work (as hereinafter defined) accompanied by dialogue, pantomime, dance, stage action, or visual representation of the work from which the music is taken; performance of one or more musical compositions as part of a story or plot, whether accompanied or unaccompanied by dialogue, pantomime, dance, stage action, or visual representation; performance of a concert version of a “dramatico-musical work” (as hereinafter defined).

And finally, just so we know: “The term ‘dramatico-musical’ work as used in this agreement, shall include, but not be limited to, a musical comedy, opera, play with music, revue, or ballet.”

BMI’s agreement is very similar:

BMI only licenses non-dramatic performing rights in the music it controls. A dramatic performing right can involve either music which was originally part of a “dramatic or dramatico-musical work” (the term generally used to describe operas, operettas, musical shows, ballets, movies and other similar productions), or it can involve the dramatic use of music which may not have been originally a part of such a dramatic or dramatico-musical work.

Once you create something in which music is only one component, it doesn’t matter whether the music constitutes as much as 85 percent or as little as 5 percent of the content. If the other components are not subsumed within the structure of the music, blanket agreements like the “small rights” ones that ASCAP, BMI, and SECAC maintain with venues all over the country, are no longer applicable. Therefore, fees must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Although the basics of the term “grand rights” are the same no matter what organization or lawyer you are talking to, you should be clear with your affiliated agency regarding whether or not these areas are defined in exactly the same way. For example, in my conversation with BMI’s Ralph Jackson, I learned that for the purpose of determining whether a piece is going to land in the grand rights category (especially concert arrangements of dramatic pieces), BMI looks closely at all the details of the printed program and at any other documentation (such as newspaper reviews) of the performance—e.g. if a byline for a choreographer appears in the program, this could be a tell-tale sign that the work in question would not be covered by a blanket license for small rights.

In the era prior to the founding of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or any of their international equivalents, it was always up to the composers (or their publishers) to leverage the best percentages they could from “the house.” But as these agencies came into being, it was partly these organizations’ composer and publisher members who decided what sort of control to cede to them. It is understandable that a successful composer or publisher would not want to hand over control of negotiating rights if he or she is doing pretty well in that particular arena. In one sense, this division of labor is simply a decision made by a majority of the members of a given performing rights society, because that’s the way they wanted their particular club to work.

However there is another compelling reason for performing rights societies to stay out of grand rights negotiations: the prevailing legal opinion strongly suggests that for them to do so would constitute price fixing and would violate several statutes of anti-trust laws of many governments.

There now, everything clear? If not, let’s continue.

Avoiding a Grand Wrong

A long time ago, in an age before Cage, Kagel, or even Satie, it was fairly obvious when a composer had crossed the line into the “dramatico”—one might even call it a work with a narrative structure, or maybe even recognize it as something with a story line. Nowadays a composer might write a piece with only a smattering of text or dance in it and not consider those extra-musical components significant enough to warrant a grand right. But a presenter considering that piece for a program may see it the other way around and not want to deal with a questionable grand rights piece (because it will cost more), and therefore decide not to use it. Dance elements in a piece almost always raise a red flag on the grand rights question, but Morton Gould’s Concerto for Tap Dancer does not. Somehow the use of dance in this case seems safely encapsulated as a musical element and not a “dramatico” one.

A presenter deciding not to use a piece due to unwillingness to negotiate a grand rights agreement is just one example of how the grand rights issue can negatively impact a composer. If you are not self-published, make sure your publisher is always in agreement with you about which pieces in your catalogue are straight ahead concert works, which are clearly dramatic, and those which might flip one way or the other, depending on interpretation. This example is a “before the event” situation.

A List of Helpful Hints

Before the piece is written, if you have doubts, check these things:

  • Are you collaborating with someone? You may be getting into grand rights territory.
  • If that person is a choreographer, librettist, stage director, or actor, you almost certainly have a dramatic presentation.
  • Call or email your performing rights organization if you have any questions, and be as specific as you can about the details of the piece in question.

    Regardless of its status (whether it is a dramatic rights piece or not), always register it with your affiliated rights organization.

    If you have what was originally a grand rights piece, and you have made what you believe is a concert arrangement of it, register that also. It’s also a good idea to let your organization know that that is why you are making the additional registration.

    Talk with other composers who have dealt with grand rights issues. While it is illegal to fix a standard price for a grand right, no one can prevent your having a few informal conversations with friends.

    Talk with presenters ahead of time. If they are commissioning the piece, make sure that they know the financial details and responsibilities regarding a grand rights piece.

    Be flexible. Not every presenter is going to have the resources to give you your dream fee.

    If possible, keep yourself involved in the piece’s presentation. It keeps you informed, and although a presenter may desire and be able to leverage your grand rights fee down, if you are there in some capacity (sound designer, for example) you’ll at least be getting some recompense.

    Persevere.

But there can be post-event problems as well. The artist thinks he has written a concert work that has some elements of abstract theater in it. The presenter presents it; then after the event, disagreement ensues. The artist thinks he is due small rights royalties, but the presenter says: “No, that was a theatrical event which cost a lot to put on. And we needed more money for sets, so there’s where your grand rights fee went.” At this point, you could try to fight them, but then your artists fee will basically just be going to the lawyers. (And you thought negotiating before an event was difficult!)

Feelin’ Grand

Despite the possibilities for extreme, and potentially litigious, differences in interpretation, having a piece in your catalog that carries a grand rights designation is not necessarily a bad thing. Commercial productions involve them all the time, and if the show runs on or off Broadway for ten years, the “pie” is large enough for all parties to share nicely, or even to pay lawyers to slice it up in a fair manner while keeping some of the crust for themselves.

A typical “new music” theater production probably is not going to run for ten years. More likely, if not a one-off production, it may have a short tour and a budget that has very little fat. It’s in these cases where the presenter or presenting organization is less keen to get involved in the required extras. Sometimes just the cost of having the lawyers draw up contracts is enough to tip the balance into the red. However, new, on-the-fringe, boundary-crossing productions happen often enough for us to know that the situation is not hopeless. There are a number of survival strategies.

If we’re going to talk about numbers—e.g. percentages of ticket sale revenue—we’re getting into a vast and murky land for sure. For one thing, the range of percentages has changed dramatically over the past thirty years. Decades ago, it was typical to negotiate for three-and-a-half to four percent of eventual house earnings; nowadays, seven to eight percent is not unusual. If you have a librettist, you’ll have to share. Ultimately it’s quite a gamble. Opening night could see you dining on caviar if you sell out the Met. Then again, you might have to settle for reheated leftovers if no one shows up. The percentage rule is not fixed in stone, however. School productions are usually negotiated based on a flat fee.

There are also many additional variables, a big one being the rental fee for the music. If the publisher is making a hefty rental fee, you might not be surprised to see the presenter holding a tighter line on what they want to pay in addition to that. Sometimes there are benefits other than cash which get included in a grand rights agreement, but they have to be specifically requested. Comp tickets are just such an item. It’s not unusual for a presenter to give the publisher two tickets (for each piece the publisher has on the concert), but it has to be requested ahead of time in the contract.

Grand rights issues extend beyond the proscenium. If a radio station wants to broadcast your opera, let’s say, it is required to obtain a grand rights license from you ahead of time. How high a fee you will be able to negotiate has to do with the name recognition of the composer or the piece.

Complicating matters further, works covered under small rights licenses (your latest piano sonata or string quartet) become grand rights properties as soon as someone wants to use them in a theatrical or dance presentation. The publisher of your work not only maintains the right to negotiate a fee (which again can fluctuate widely, but a good ballpark figure is within the above numbers of between three-and-a-half to eight percent), but he or she also has the right to refuse any requests to adapt the work, or to be as selective as he or she wants. This has made for many a lively cocktail conversation.

If you’re one of those people who uses an accountant rather than personally face those complex tax forms, this all might sound a little bit daunting. But, once you’ve done it a few times, you will get better at the money. If you feel queasy about it, try it with your friends first. If that’s still too uncomfortable, try it with your dog or cat. If you don’t have one of those, borrow one from a friend. Things will get better.

After You’ve Figured Out the Secret Handshake (We Can’t Tell You)…

There is a certain veil around the grand rights issue that does make it a little more complicated than talking about interest rates with your neighbor’s pet. And that’s the fact that we are not supposed to compare notes about who was able to get what percent, at least in public. Grand rights are partly reckoned as a percentage of the box office take, but there are sometimes substantial fees encountered up front, if the writer’s/composer’s representatives have the leverage to do so.

Although the composers or their publishers negotiate these special rights, they are not allowed to discuss them with other writers. Writers are not even supposed to broach this topic if they are part of a public panel. In my conversations with ASCAP’s Fran Richard, she related just how sensitive this topic can be.

In the early days of Meet The Composer, Stephen Sondheim helpfully drew up a guide of recommended fees for composers. This was almost immediately met with the threat of a lawsuit charging monopoly and restraint of trade. If you look in a Meet The Composer handbook today, you will see a schedule of fees which are broad ranges, so broad one might think they are too vague. Well, they have to be. For one thing they truly do reflect a wide range of factors: the career stage of the composer; the duration and forces required for the piece; the nature of the commissioning organization, just to name a few. However, if they were more specific, they could be potentially illegal with regard to laws about monopoly and free trade.

I recently talked with Mikel Rouse, specifically about how composers maintain themselves, their careers, and their homes in this complex workplace environment. It sometimes resembles the ideal of a left of center socialist paradigm where your union makes sure that you are rewarded for your labors. Yet at some point, and the point is very hazy and liable to move unexpectedly within that haze, composers find themselves in the most volatile free market scrumfest, negotiating with the fiercest of the fierce.

Rouse’s experience and observations reinforced certain points. Sometimes presenters are well able to meet composers’ requests (demands?) if the parties find themselves in direct negotiation regarding this grand rights fee. There is a greater chance for success if composers are aware of the presenters’ resources and, maybe more importantly, their flexibility. It’s part of the never-ending dance of the balance of self interest (not necessarily a bad thing) with that team spirit that allows us to get art to the masses. Like many composers today, Rouse stays involved in the production and performance of his music. Not only is it aesthetically healthy for a composer to do so, it is fiscally smart as well. With first-hand knowledge of the operation, it is much easier to negotiate a deal that is realistic.

How do composers in the marketplace and in their own lives, keep themselves viable, that is, creating the art they want to, and at the same time getting paid something for their efforts? The models that Steve Reich and Philip Glass gave us not only changed the landscape as far as notes were concerned, they reclaimed the hands-on role for the composer. Play what you write. Eat what you cook. A not-too-small fringe benefit is that the composer/performer gets back in the payroll line no matter how the royalty situation turns out.

Thanks to: Fran Richard at ASCAP, Ralph Jackson at BMI, Ed Harsh at Meet The Composer, Sue Klein (formerly of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.), and Mikel Rouse in his living room.

***

Jack Vees is a composer/performer. His one act opera Feynman was performed at the Knitting Factory last December. He is also the Director of the Center for Studies in Music Technology at the Yale School of Music. But he is not an entertainment industry lawyer, nor does he play one on T.V.

Questions for Three Composer Managers



Jessica Lustig 21C Media Group

What do you do for composers who are not also performers, composers who are just writing music?

I would say it’s largely promotion—sending their music out, talking to performers and conductors about their catalog, looking for opportunities for commissions for them. And then all of the business details if they don’t have a major publisher. Some do and some don’t. For instance, negotiating the contracts and dealing with all of the details of the actual delivery of the materials.

How do composers know when they’re ready, that they’re at the level where they should look around and find someone to help them out with those kinds of details?

I think when they feel overwhelmed by the amount of details surrounding commission requests. Also when they have several major events that are maybe happening in a short period of time, and they’re not sure how they’re going to get through it. I think it just becomes obvious; it’s a critical mass of having too many requests to know which ones you should do and also feeling like there’s a lot of opportunity for exposure and not being sure how to take advantage of it.

There’s sort of a stereotype that artists are not capable of keeping that aspect of their work organized.

No, I don’t think that’s true. I think some can and some can’t. Some people do it very well—there are some extraordinary business people in our field, and some of those people would never really need a composer manager. Some people are capable of doing it, but simply don’t wish to spend their time that way. They would rather be writing music.

When composers come to you and ask you to manage them, do you take them on automatically, or is there an artistic compatibility issue that you also look at?

There’s definitely an artistic compatibility issue—without that, we can’t do our work effectively.

What sort of things do you look for?

I think fundamentally if we don’t feel like we really believe in the music, we’re not going to be good advocates for it. And that’s a very personal thing. I couldn’t put that into words. There isn’t a certain way that people have to write music. It’s much more personal than that. But if we don’t feel like we will do a good job for it, we’re not the right match. That doesn’t mean that they won’t find someone else who deeply believes and can go out and really go to bat for them and make a lot of things happen.

What if the composer does have a publisher? How do you fit in when composers have several people handling different aspects of their career?

Usually we interface pretty closely when one of our composers has a major publisher. We’ll do things like work together on promotion and follow-up. Oftentimes we’ll come in with a plan for promotion for a set period or specific engagements and work together on executing that plan. Rarely, but sometimes, the publisher will come to us and say, “This is what we’re thinking about doing. Are there pieces of this that you might be able to help us with?”

And what does something like this cost?

It’s a variable cost. Sometimes, it’s a flat fee and sometimes it’s a combination of flat fee and a percentage of commissions. There’s no one price fits all. And it also depends on where the composer is in his or her career.

Richard Guérin

You work for Philip Glass’s record label, but you’re also managing two composers right now?

My background in artist management comes from a year and a half at CAMI, where I was an assistant to a performing arts manager. I’ve just transferred the skill set I developed there to helping these composers. One is Evan Ziporyn, who is obviously affiliated with Bang on a Can, but he’s getting more and more known as a composer in his own right. And the other composer I work with is Giancarlo Vulcano, and he’s just a young composer trying to make his way. So our atypical, non-traditional relationship is basically that I’m trying to help them in any way I can, meaning performances, getting people to talk about them, know who they are, just working the industry circuit.

So when it comes down to it, what’s the checklist of things you have agreed to do for them?

Well, there’s all the traditional artist management stuff: scheduling, contracts, that sort of thing—the vulgar issue of dealing with money and negotiating a salary for a commission. But more than that, it’s grass roots soliciting. Forget about getting people to perform it, it’s hard enough in today’s climate to get anybody to just to listen to a demo CD. The reality is that the Boston Symphony won’t even play Philip Glass, so how are we going to get the Boston Symphony to play Evan Ziporyn? So it’s a unique relationship with a view toward the long term of getting young artists to establish working relationships with these composers, finding string quartets or conductors who might be music directors down the road who start appreciating what these composers do now. It’s bridging gaps. I’m basically an evangelist. People need champions no matter who they are. Without getting into the snobbery of certain demographics, basically what we’re trying to do is just get things going for these guys—get people to go to the concerts, hear the new CDs.

Are there things you can do more effectively than these composers, either because of your skill set or just because it’s more socially acceptable for you to push them in ways they can’t promote themselves?

By and large, the artists I’ve come into contact with don’t enjoy the business part and unfortunately the business part needs to take place. And just to have them wasting their time, in my opinion, on that part of it is a real issue. So a lot of what I try to do is alleviate all of that from their mind. As long as they have an interpersonal relationship with somebody they can trust, they can be free to create and do what they’re supposed to do as artists.

In these two cases, how did you connect with these gentlemen and agree to work with them?

I independently contacted Evan Ziporyn. It was really a matter of recognizing talent. They’re not going to be able to jump to the next level on their own.

Both of your composers are self-published, so you’re not interfacing with the PR departments of other companies. Do you see not being part of such an entourage as a hindrance or a good thing?

Well, there’s this very old, functional system in place which has served everyone very well for a very long time, and it employed millions of people. That old model works for some people. For my part, I don’t mind—part of my other job in obviously working with publishing companies and trying to get things recorded and so forth—but I think in Evan’s case it certainly helps that he’s self published. It’s one less thing that you have to think about. I don’t think it necessarily matters beyond just trying to have a situation where everybody, including the artist manager, has room to think outside the box, and in that way Evan is more flexible and so am I.

When a composer decides to get help of this sort, what does it cost?

Well, traditionally the relationship is a percentage of whatever sort of deal a manager cuts, whether it be a recording or commission. They just take a chunk. In the case of both of the composers I am working with, I didn’t want that traditional relationship, and we discussed this at length. We wanted it to be more flexible. So basically I’m working on retainer—I get a certain fee for always being on the clock rather than take a percentage of their activities.

Elizabeth Dworkin
Dworkin & Company

When you have a composer on your roster who is not also a performer, what do you do for them?

We do management and PR, and whether you’re a performer or a composer, in my book you need both. They work hand in hand, and it’s ideal when it’s all under one roof because everybody’s on the same page. We do all the nuts and bolts stuff, obviously, dealing with the performance and publishers, but we’re inundated with so much stuff in this business today that you really need to be a composer’s advocate. Even if it’s somebody who’s more known, there are always orchestras or conductors who don’t know their work.

So you would also be a link between performers and the composer in a performance situation?

Yes, very often we’ll be contacted if they’re interested in commissioning one of our composers. Then the composer will deal with it artistically, but they need someone else who can put some of it together, put a consortium together maybe. We’ll call three orchestras that we think might be appropriate for whatever it is, or chamber ensembles or festivals or whatever the case may be, and help try to make it happen.

How do composers know when it might be time to get someone to help them out in this way?

Well, I think there comes a point with composers when they know that they can’t push quite as hard as somebody like me can push. Also, once a lot of calls or performances start coming in, they need someone who can take care of this stuff so that they can concentrate on what they should be concentrating on, writing music.

In what areas do you think you are better equipped than they are, especially when you consider the social prerogative you have to speak more freely and push harder because it’s your job?

Even though they may know a lot of people and may be in a lot of places, we’re in a position to be out there and talking to twice as many or four times as many people than they would normally be. And they can say, “God, I’d love it if the Cleveland Orchestra would play my music,” but they just don’t have a contact there, and there may be people there that we work with regularly.

So you become the agent as well as the manager?

Yup.

How do you fit in, then, when the composer already has a publisher and maybe a publicist? Sometimes it can be quite an entourage.

There are publishers who are really wonderful, but when you’ve got a large roster, it’s impossible to catch absolutely everything. We work closely with the publishers and we can help each other with that. So we can kind of cover all bases and make sure everything gets done.

Do you automatically take a new composer client on, or is there an artistic consideration factored in when making that decision?

It has to be the right fit at the time and the right chemistry. And if you take on too much or if it doesn’t fit in for some reason or if you really don’t believe in the music, I don’t think you can sell it. I know that there are plenty of publicists/management-industry types that do things for other reasons, but in our case, it’s all about the music. My big problem with what’s going on in our field today is that we’re getting away from that and it’s becoming about so many other things. I’m convinced that you can find a way to combine everything, get the marketing and the PR done that you need to get done and still make it about the music.

So, what does this cost?

Well, it varies.

Come on. Ballpark it for me.

Sometimes composers will come to us and we can’t take them on fulltime, but they’ve got this great CD and need to get the word out there. So that may be a one-time project fee, which will be a few thousand dollars. Ongoing management and representation is usually around the $2,000-a-month range.

Don’t Steal This Sample: How To Play By the Rules



When it comes to using recorded music samples in a new composition, there are many who create in a dangerous legal limbo land without understanding what the rules are. In the absence of legal counsel, they choose to rely on the advice of acquaintances who peddle rumors of the “two-second” or “four-note” way to skirt copyright infringement and whisper of a vague concept referred to as “fair use” that will protect them. Be advised: In the courtroom, should you be unfortunate enough to find your presence requested there, it’s all bad math.

So here we shall not argue the ethics of sampling, its social value, or any other such philosophical quandaries concerning the “rightness” or “wrongness” of said act from an artistic perspective. Instead, we shall outline the rules in as black and white a manner as possible for those who want to be sure that they are not breaking the law. As with all things legal, however, this article is only intended as a guide and should not be interpreted as legal advice. Speak with an intellectual property lawyer for guidance directly applicable to your own projects.

So, What Are the Rules?

At the most basic level, if you want to make a copy of all or a portion of a commercial recording for use in a piece that you plan to distribute, you must obtain the permission of two rights holders: 1) the copyright owner of the piece (this can be the composer or the publisher, depending), and 2) the copyright owner of the sound recording (the master rights holder, usually the recording company). If you do not have both of these permissions on file, you risk committing copyright infringement.

Though it is popular to suggest that such copyright infringement is “no big deal” if you are not a Billboard-charting artist, consider for a moment just how deep a hole such an act can dig you into. You are legally and economically liable for the infringement, and even an “honest mistake” on your part can cost you thousands of dollars in penalties. In addition, you might also be in violation of certain clauses in your own recording contract, which can get you into trouble (with its own punishing price tag) with your label and any distributors and retail stores with which they do business. This is especially costly if the court requires you to recall and destroy all the copies of your illegal work.

What Does It Cost To Clear?

Once you understand the rules and the financial risks of breaking them, it appears to make quite a bit of sense to always clear your samples, no matter the headache. Unfortunately, the process can cost you much more than a bottle of aspirin in time and cash.

To start, you must determine who owns said copyrights. The Internet directories provided by performing rights organizations such as ASCAP and BMI are a good place to start looking for the copyright holder of the work you would like to use. From there, you venture into the task of locating the owner of the master recording. This information is often clearly printed on the CD, tape, or record but, the recording business being what it is these days, companies often fold and ownership of the masters can be difficult to suss out. There are clearance houses and freelance clearance experts who can help speed you through the process using their experience and their rolodex of contacts, but the cost may rule out this option for an independent project.

Once you locate the owners, start making phone calls. Major labels and publishers often have sample clearance departments. Otherwise, start by asking for the permissions department. Now the negotiations begin. All parties will likely want to examine exactly what the usage will be, meaning that you will have to do the work—assemble a rough cut or even a completely finished product—before it is determined that you will actually be allowed (and can afford) to use the material in the way that you wish. Contrary to the advice commonly given to composers of art song—namely, to always clear the usage rights to text they wish to set before a note of music is committed to paper—in this case you will likely have to do all of the work in advance. With sampling, you simply accept that you always run the risk your work will be for the entertainment of your desktop trash can.

There is no standard guideline or fee structure for sample usage, and some copyright owners find it not worth their time to deal with requests that will not net a significant income stream. When they do agree to work with you, the rates may seem prohibitively high if you yourself do not have a large-grossing project on the table and a major label (and that label’s lawyers) behind you. A sample deemed “very central” to a secondary project could be met with a request for a 50:50 profit split, possibly in addition to an upfront fee. If a usage is not expected to earn much in terms of unit sales, you can be asked for a larger fee up front over a percentage, but you also might be told that a fee will not be expected until you sell a certain number of units. Be clear if you are an unsigned or small-label artist: this may tip the conversation towards more financially agreeable terms. Ultimately, you don’t know until you ask: it’s all about the negotiation.

Several publishers closely aligned with the new music field said they will almost always be willing to discuss the possibility with a composer, household name or no, and begin negotiations. The rate they charge, however, “totally depends on the usage, how important it is to the piece,” says Boosey & Hawkes’s Senior Music Consultant Ken Krasner, who declined to speak about specific musical compositions, composers, or rates. “If it’s the key to the song, it will cost a lot more.”

Gene Caprioglio, composer liaison and director of rights clearance at C.F. Peters Corporation, says the issue doesn’t come across his desk very often. When the company has been contacted with regard to clearing a sample, it’s usually been an intersection with the pop world. New Age record producers are also among the most frequent sample requesters. A DJ recently requested the usage of a sample that was deemed a significant piece of the composition, and Peters asked for 50 percent ownership of the resulting track. The pop group Maria looped a two-bar sample from the John Cage prepared piano work Sonatas and Interludes in their track “Weakness,” and though he declined to discuss the details of the monetary arrangement for the usage, Caprioglio did note that Cage was also given a writing credit.

Though he sees the difficulty in the situation for composers using samples, Caprioglio confirms that he would need to hear a completely finished track before granting a usage clearance and determining the cost. “You really have to in order to determine what your composer’s part of a finished composition is. I see how that could be a problem, but if you’re going to use someone else’s work, you have to take that into account.”

Cutting Costs

Some independent artists suspect that the economic impact of their projects will prevent anyone from spending the time and money to pursue them if they commit copyright infringement. Since they may only sell 2,000 discs, they count on the idea that no one will find out about the infringement in the first place. These artists may decide to risk the usage for these reasons, though of course this does not offer them any sort of legal protection.

As mentioned at the outset, there are no magical formulas for determining when it is okay to use a sample without permission. Any sample that is recognizable (or can be reverse-engineered to be recognizable) that you do not clear may be subject to the copyright owner claiming foul.

The determination that copyright infringement has occurred will rest less on the length of the sample, and more on a consideration of its recognizability, how substantial a portion of the original work you have used, and its role in your own composition. Altering the sample significantly or using a very small portion may get you out of copyright infringement of the composition or the recording, but not necessarily both.

If you want to cut corners without breaking the law, there are some options open to you. You can avoid having to deal with the owner of the sound recording if you record your own version of the sample you wish to use. However, you must still clear the usage of the piece itself with the publisher.

Also, in addition to sample libraries which, like clip art, are actually sold for this usage (though check the fine print before you distribute your work), there are a number of artists who are friendly to sharing their music with you. Often these works are flagged with Creative Commons licenses, which outline specifically in what ways the tracks may be used legally.

You might also consider using the music of friends and close colleagues to help smooth your way through the clearance process and quite possibly reduce your costs, but as with all things legal, be sure everyone is on the same page by getting all permissions in writing.

Something to keep in mind is that these rules apply to the act of copying and distributing a music sample. If you perform a sample live off a legally purchased commercial recording in a venue covered by the blanket licenses offered by performing rights organizations, you are probably in the clear. Unsure if your venue is covered? Be sure to ask before show night.

The Cost of Doing Business

If you are overwhelmed at this point, you are not alone. The clearance process often takes time, money, and patience.

Composer R. Luke DuBois says he will always clear explicit samples, but doesn’t usually clear those that completely obliterate the source material. Clearing something off a new recording is not so difficult in terms of determining who you need to ask, but it still “often turns into a silly little game where the label owning the sample tries to overemphasize the role of their sample in your song to increase their fee, and you try to underemphasize it,” says DuBois. If, however, the label has folded or the master rights have since been purchased by a multinational corporation, he says it can become “a labyrinthine quest” to connect with someone who has the authority to clear the sample.

For example, faced with clearing a 1940s big band sample, it was a real challenge to determine who might own the rights, since the label was defunct and the composer, arranger, singer, record producer, and bandleader were all dead. DuBois recalls, “Eventually I ended up with a man at a label that had the reissue rights (but hadn’t yet reissued the record) who told me that, given that we were making very few discs, he was only interested in negotiating a percentage if we were to do a second, much larger pressing, as the legal fees involved in drawing up the contract exceeded the amount of money I would have paid out on a 5,000 disc pressing anyway. So the whole thing was moot in the end.”

What does clearing the samples cost him? “It’s mostly time. Despite the fact that a lot of my artwork deals with cultural commentary and resampling pop media, I’m not particularly interested in breaking the law, so I try to fairly evaluate what I’m about to undertake to see if it’s legitimate given the scope of the release.”

Mechanical Licensing for the Maladroit

Randy Nordschow
Randy Nordschow
Photo by Colin Conroy

Mechanical licensing isn’t a topic that often comes up in casual conversation among composers, but it’s a facet of the music industry that every composer needs to know about. Sure, we’re not in it for the money, but there’s no reason to pass up a revenue stream, no matter how insignificant it may seem. You’ve probably already joined BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC and receive royalty checks for performances, but are you getting your fair share when it comes to everything in your catalog that has been released on CD?

Maybe your composition department didn’t offer any courses covering the practicalities and day-to-day operations of the recording industry, so let me help you get up to speed in one area in particular. When we peer into the crystal ball of any composer’s career, it’s pretty safe to assume that the future holds at least one commercially released recording. If you reach this milestone as a self-published composer, make sure you’re equipped to collect all your royalties from album sales, downloads, and airplay. The good news is that it doesn’t take too much time and effort to sort everything out.

Mechanical Licensing 101: Who Needs Them and Why

If you have an outside publisher handling your music, you don’t have to worry about mechanical licensing—they will do the job for you. But self-published composers need to make sure that they have a mechanical license in place with the record company before the CD is released. If the music publisher doesn’t have a compulsory license (a mechanical license at the statutory rate set by law) in place with the record company before the date of first distribution, they have effectively forfeited their right to collect any royalties from the sale of that particular CD. Don’t expect any retroactive payments, though a music publisher can choose to sue the record company for infringement if this happens. Of course in new music circles, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to burn bridges and let a bunch of lawyers walk away with all the profits and artists’ royalties.

What’s a mechanical license? Simply put, it’s an agreement in which a music publisher grants a distributing party the right to reproduce and dispense copyrighted musical compositions via CDs, records, tapes, and certain digital configurations, such as iTunes and subscription-based Internet services. Typically, the distributing party in the agreement is a record label, and most reputable labels will take due diligence to insure that they have licensing agreements in place with each music publisher before releasing an album. Not everyone follows the law to a tee, however, and there’s nothing wrong with taking a proactive approach rather than waiting for the record company to come knocking on your door waving the paperwork in your face.

Time Out: Are You Ready To Rumble?

Since the deal is brokered between the music publisher (we’re assuming that’s you) and another party, it makes things a lot easier if you have your publishing business in order before you get started. For instance, do you have a business certificate, or DBA (doing business as), in place? Left coast composer Alex Shapiro outlined the process in an earlier article, but my experience in Brooklyn was quite different.

My first obstacle was to locate the required forms. Here in New York, the necessary paperwork isn’t freely available online. Get this—you have to buy the documents at $2 a pop in person at stationery stores and copy centers, or $9 each via the Blumberg legal forms website. I’m sure I wasn’t the first clueless composer to navigate my way through the Brooklyn county clerk’s office, finally to land at the correct station, window #2, and get the lowdown. Flanked by a vista of drone-like workers stamping and filing piles of paper in the background, the smiling employee instructed me on how to obtain the proper forms and, before I went on my merry way, he wished me bountiful royalties. He really digs composers.

Like a classic film noir set-up, I entered the lobby of an office building down the street and spied my destination: an innocuous newsstand. In addition to selling chewing gum and Vitamin Water, the man behind the counter sold the necessary Blumberg forms. On top of that, he’s also a notary—a nice sideline considering his proximity to the city’s courthouse and other municipal offices. A glance at my ID and a total of $12 later, I had all of the forms signed and notarized. Back at the county clerk’s office I embarked on a second Draconian journey from numbered window to numbered window collecting the proper stamps and embossments, and dropping $120 in the process. But in a matter of about an hour, I was in business—literally.

At this point, you should also consider opening a business checking account. Not only will you be able to cash those royalty checks, but with a debit/credit card setup in the business’s name, it suddenly becomes very easy to separate personal spending from business expenses.

Getting Through the Fine Print

Now that everything is in order, you are ready to execute a mechanical license. Despite the fact that all these dealings may be totally unfamiliar, there’s no reason to be daunted. Setting up a direct license with a record company is easy. In fact, the record company does most of the work. The best time to contact the record company’s royalties department is about a month before the release date. By then, the administrators should have all the final timings for the compositions on the disc and the rest of the necessary data they need to put together the licenses. When the contract arrives, read it over, make sure everything is correct, including the spelling of your publisher name and address, the timing of the track, and that you are to receive 100 percent of the statutory rate.

Of course, if you’re anything like me, completing this sort of paper work is a total drag. Isn’t there someone who can take care of all this stuff?

Indeed there is. For a mere 6.75 percent commission from royalties collected, the Harry Fox Agency will execute mechanical licenses on your behalf, as well as collect and distribute your royalties for you. If you’re ready to affiliate your music publishing business with HFA, here’s the 411. Note that, although their literature states that in order to apply for representation by HFA your publishing company must own or control at least one musical composition currently under a mechanical license by a third party, there’s a way to sidestep this catch-22 if this happens to be your first foray into licensing. You can save yourself the step of directly licensing your first release yourself if you include, along with your affiliate application, a signed letter from the record company stating that they are seeking a license from you at the statutory rate. (Note that HFA doesn’t engage in agreements that do not adhere to the statutory rate set by law without your permission.)

Expect to spend around 15 minutes filling out the straightforward HFA affiliate application. The only information you may have to look up is your business checking account number and your bank’s ABA routing number. If you have any questions, HFA’s client relation agents are friendly and helpful—that is, if you can get anyone to pickup your call. I had about a 50:50 success ratio.

If you decide to affiliate with Harry Fox, the agency considers it a lifetime commitment. They will not drop you, even if the next time someone requests a license from you happens sometime after the reappearance of Halley’s Comet. On the other hand, you are free to terminate the relationship whenever you wish. Being an affiliated publisher doesn’t preclude you from licensing directly if you so wished. However after joining, you may never have to think about licensing ever again. As a general rule, record companies check with the Harry Fox Agency first, which in turn takes care of everything. As an affiliated publisher, each title you submit to HFA will be registered on their web-based applications: Songfile (used for licenses of 2,500 copies or less) and eMechanical (used for larger-market licensing).

If your music is primarily issued by foreign record companies based in one country, you might consider looking into affiliating with that nation’s corresponding mechanical and digital licensing agency. However, this can get a little messy considering the roles of foreign societies don’t always match up exactly with the way things are done here in America, not to mention that eligibility requirements for admission into foreign agencies are often a lot more stringent. You should carefully research the benefits and drawbacks before affiliating with any performing rights or licensing agency. There are no local alternatives to the Harry Fox Agency other than going the do-it-yourself route. If your music is commercially released overseas, HFA works with foreign agencies to collect your royalties, but not before a 5 to 20 percent commission is deducted by the foreign society (royalties in other countries tend to be higher to begin with) on top of the standard HFA commission.

If you’re not constantly harassed for licenses by record companies on the scale of, say, Paul McCartney or Dolly Parton, it might make sense for you to execute direct licenses each time your work is commercially released and save yourself the HFA commission fees. However, as one record company executive told me, Harry Fox collects. In fact, HFA conducts examinations to verify the accuracy of the payments remitted by licensees and claims that, in many cases, the affiliated publisher’s royalty compliance recoveries are in excess of the commission they pay for their service. Also, in the unlikely event that your music ends up being released without your knowledge, as an HFA affiliated publisher you’ll have the resources of the nation’s largest mechanical licensing, collections, and distribution agency on your side. As representatives of roughly 28,000 music publishers both big and small, they maintain a vigorous anti-piracy stance. In collaboration with foreign societies, HFA has collection and monitoring services in over 95 territories around the world. So in a way, what you’re really paying for is all of these above-and-beyond services. The lone, self-published composer certainly isn’t capable of this level of fiscal consciousness, especially if they’re planning to turn in that next commission on time.

So, how much “collecting” are we talking here? Admittedly, not much. Currently, the statutory rate is $.091 per unit sold for compositions that are five minutes in duration or less, or $.0175 per minute of fraction thereof per copy for compositions over five minutes. If for some reason your CD hits the Billboard charts, those fractions of pennies can really add up. However, the average classical CD sells between 1000 to 2000 copies worldwide, and I’m sure Andrea Bocelli helps to inflate this figure handsomely. If your 20-minute symphony sells 500 copies, that’s $175 ($163.19 minus HFA’s cut). So at the end of the day, you should probably consider yourself very lucky if you managed to rake in triple digits. But if you affiliate with HFA, it won’t really take any of your time or attention beyond watching the direct deposits trickle into your account on a quarterly basis.

Why not get your ducks in line and enjoy a little mad money? You’ve got nothing to lose. As I type, the Music Publishers Association is lobbing congress to consider certain digital distribution models, like satellite radio services for instance, as both a mechanical right and a performance right. So who knows—if the publishers get their way, royalties from HFA and your performing rights organization could be getting bigger very soon.

Organ Transplant: Making New Work for One of the Oldest Instruments

Sandra Soderlund
Sandra Soderlund

Far from being a historic curio, the pipe organ remains an active part of the current classical music scene. In the last several years alone, large pipe organs have been built in several major concert halls and university auditoriums in the United States, and many of these establishments have commissioned new works to inaugurate their instruments.

The organ can seem dauntingly complex to someone who is new to writing for the instrument. The pipe organ is a wind instrument playable by two or more manual keyboards and usually a pedal keyboard. Organ music is generally written on three staves—two for the hands as in piano music, and an extra bass staff for the feet.

The mechanism in a mechanical-action organ is relatively simple. When a key is pressed, it pulls down a long strip of wood called a tracker that opens a valve admitting wind to a pipe or pipes. (The wind was originally supplied by bellows that were pumped by hand.) The valve stays open and the sound remains constant until the key is released. Obviously the keyboards of a mechanical-action organ must be directly under or very near the pipes for the action to work smoothly. With the advent of electricity, blower motors replaced men to pump the bellows. Later electric playing action was introduced wherein the pressure of the key activates a circuit to an electro-magnet that opens the pipe valve. Today builders use both mechanical and electric action. Some new instruments have both, and the player can choose which to use. The main advantage of mechanical action is that the player has direct contact with the pipes and can control not only when they speak but also whether the attacks and releases are fast or slow. The disadvantage of mechanical-action instruments is that the player does not hear the sound the way listeners in the room do. The advantage of electric action is that the console can be placed anywhere, so the player can often hear the instrument in a balanced way. If, however, the console is too far from the pipes, the player experiences a significant delay in the sound that can be disturbing. The player does not have as much control over the touch in electric-action instruments as in those with mechanical action.

The electronic organ is not a real pipe organ, but the console often looks like one. Today the sound is usually produced by digitally-recorded samples from pipe organs. It is then amplified and put through speakers that are installed in the room. The stop knobs or tablets on an electronic instrument have the same types of name and number indications as those on a pipe organ. Some pipe organ builders use digitally-sampled sounds instead of the largest and most expensive pipes in their instruments to save space and money. The specifications of an instrument should tell which ranks are real and which are electronic.

A very important part of the sound of a pipe organ is the room in which it is built and its placement in that room. A reputable organ builder will design an instrument for a specific space and voice the pipes in that space once it is assembled. This is one of the reasons that every pipe organ is different. Part of the amazing sound of historic instruments is that they are often placed high in rectangular, reverberant rooms with thick, solid walls, no padding anywhere, and often under a barrel-shaped ceiling. Unfortunately most American rooms are wide and shallow with a great deal of padding that absorbs sound. A dry room allows for crisp staccato playing and very fast passage-work. Massive effects are disappointing, however. Final notes and chords often have to be lengthened and rests shortened to make up for the lack of reverberation. On the other hand a reverberant room may cause fast textures to be blurred. The reverberation can be used, however, to make lovely echo effects.

  • Bach Chorale played on the Silbermann organ at Freiberg Cathedral, Germany

Many tone colors are available on the pipe organ. Each of them is produced by a row or rank of pipes, one for each key on the keyboard that activates it. (Pedal ranks have fewer pipes than manual ones because there are fewer pedal keys.) The size and shape of the pipe and the material from which it is made (metal or wood) affect its sound, as with all wind instruments. Each rank of the organ is brought into play by a knob or tablet on the console called a stop. (The earliest organs had many ranks all sounding at once. Levers were added to stop the sound of some of them, resulting in the term “stop” as well as in the common expression “pulling out all the stops.”) Organists usually refer to the size of an organ by the number of ranks of pipes it has.

Each of the different keyboards of the organ, including the pedal, engages its own division of the instrument with several ranks of pipes. The stop knobs on the console indicate in which division the ranks are housed and therefore which keyboard activates them. The divisions are usually separate from each other (above one another, side-by-side, etc.). Often one division, usually called the Swell and played from the top manual, is housed in a box with shutters on it like vertical Venetian blinds that can be opened and closed by the player for subtle dynamic effects. The other divisions are called Great and Pedal on a two-manual organ. If there are three manuals the third is usually called Choir and located below the Great. The divisions may be coupled to each other so that the full organ can be played on one manual (the Great) and pedal.

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Organ sound is based upon the blending together of different pitches of the harmonic series. The sounding pitch of each rank is indicated on its stop knob by an Arabic number. Ranks that sound the written pitch are labeled 8′ (the length of an open pipe at low C), those sounding an octave higher are labeled 4′, two octaves higher 2′, etc. Ranks sounding an octave lower than the written pitch are 16′ and two octaves lower 32′. Other members of the harmonic series are also used, resulting in pipes sounding fifths or thirds above the fundamental pitch class.

When these ranks are drawn separately over the fundamental, one hears them individually, but when they are all played together the sound is a complex one that is louder and more colorful than that of a single rank. Often the highest harmonics are drawn together with one stop knob called a mixture. A Roman numeral on the knob indicates how many ranks are being engaged.

A typical American organ will have principals, flutes, strings, and a few ranks of pipes with brass reeds in them that imitate the woodwinds and brass of the orchestra. The basic organ sound is made by pipes called principals (or a similar name in French or German). Principals are generally available at many pitch levels, even on a rather small organ.

Flute sounds are available at several pitch levels on most organs.

  • Flute at 8′, with 4′, with 2′

Many organs have pipes that imitate string sound. To copy the sound of strings playing with vibrato, a separate rank of pipes is tuned sharp to beat with the main string sound. It is called a Celeste.

  • String played alone, with Celeste, with diminuendo made by closing the Swell shutters

Most pipe organs have ranks of reed pipes that imitate orchestral instruments such as oboes, clarinets, and even brasses. The Tremolo, which shakes the wind of the instrument, is sometimes added to reed solos.

The separate high harmonics, called mutations, can be mixed with fundamental pitches to make other piquant sounds as well. The colors available on a particular instrument, called its specifications, will tell the pitch level and placement of each rank. Before writing for any organ, consult its specifications to determine what colors are available. Every organ is different.

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The written range of organ music does not reflect the possible pitches available on the instrument, as explained above. Modern organ manuals usually have fifty-six notes (C–g”’) in Europe and sixty-one (C–c””) in the U.S. The pedal keyboard of an organ duplicates the first thirty or thirty-two notes of the manual keyboard (C–f’ or g’). Organ music should be written within this range. Some American builders use the European range, so check the specifications.

Usually an 8′ stop is present in any manual registration to provide the fundamental pitch unless a special effect is desired. A 16′ stop is usually present in the pedal for the same reason, along with an 8′ one to provide more definition. Writing for the pedal is like writing for cellos and basses playing together from the same part. Special effects are available on the pedal (like 4′ alone) but are rare.

Composers have differed widely in their concern for organ registration. The German baroque composers like Bach rarely indicated what stops to use. The French, on the other hand, have always been very particular about tone color and have usually given specific registrations for every piece. It is possible simply to use dynamic markings and descriptive phrases and let the organist register the music. Hindemith did this in his organ sonatas in spite of the fact that his orchestral music is very colorful. Even if specific stop names are used in the music, an organist will have to extrapolate because instruments are all different. Some indications are helpful, like “principals and mixtures” or “solo reed” or “soft flutes.” Obviously the organist would like to know what colors a composer has in mind. Registrations that are very detailed and require a much larger or quite different instrument than the one a player has available may keep a potential performer from playing a piece. Perhaps the best idea is to give general indications of color such as those suggested here.

The most important thing to remember when writing for the organ is that it is the only instrument whose sound is constant in dynamic while the key is pressed, unless the swell shutters are used. A constant sound seems to become louder, as composers of pedal points have always known. Also, most ranks of pipes are voiced to get subtly louder as they go higher in pitch so that the top voice in a full texture will sing through. Therefore if a melody is to be prominent in the tenor range, it has to be registered louder than the surrounding texture.

Organists play with both hands and the toes and heels of both feet. Because there is no way to sustain the sound when the finger or foot leaves the key, music that is to be legato has to be carefully fingered and pedaled. Organists are accustomed to using finger substitution, finger and toe slides, and other tricks to accomplish this. They also often manipulate the releases of notes to give the impression of accents in the music. Many subtle articulations are possible. Articulations should be indicated carefully in organ music as for all wind instruments. If there are no articulation markings, an organist will usually play legato. Pedal parts must be “choreographed” by the organist. The easiest pedal writing to play is for alternate toes, as Bach used in so many fugue subjects. One foot can play scalewise notes with alternating toe and heel, and it is possible to play a third with one foot, but not larger intervals. Slow pedal parts can usually be negotiated by the organist, no matter how awkward, but fast ones should be carefully planned if they are to be successful.

Many different textures are possible on the organ. The organ music of the past was usually polyphonic, often with three voices—one for each hand and one for the feet. This texture can be played on three different colors. A solo melody with some sort of accompanying figuration works well. The melody can be on top, in the middle, or in the bass as in hundreds of organ toccatas. As mentioned above, a fairly slow melody can appear in the pedal in the tenor or alto range, played on a 4′ stop, accompanied by both hands. Because of its sustaining quality, slow music is very effective, but fast music will work too, particularly in the upper registers. (The lower sounds tend to become muddy in a fairly large room.) In Herbert Bielawa’s Pulsar, the two manuals are balanced but different in color. One has a reed in the combination. The pedal also has reeds at 8′ and 16′ to help provide the strong accentuation. The entire texture is staccato with the exception of a few chords near the end.

  • Pulsar by Herbert Bielawa, performed by Sandra Soderlund, from Pipe Organ Adventures, Albany Records (Troy 374). Used by permission.

Ready to try writing your own work for the instrument? Meet with an organist who can demonstrate what is possible and study the scores of successful organ composers from all periods. In the end, however, sitting at the instrument and trying out ideas yourself is the best learning experience you can have, besides being a lot of fun.

Crash Course: Organ Culture 101

The organ has arguably undergone its greatest evolution and redefinition, for good or ill, in the past century. A few dozen North American shops manufacture approximately 115 new pipe organs each year. Sales numbers for digital instruments are harder to determine, let alone the number of “hybrid” instruments combining older pipe organ technology with either digital additions, or supplementing digital organs with some pipe ranks.

With the exception of occasional forays into entertainment, symphonic pipe organs in public halls, or the theatre organ which flourished somewhat majestically for a few decades before the advent of sound motion pictures, playing the organ has been an enterprise inexorably linked to religious institutions. The organ was introduced to Western Christianity by the Romans, and it has flourished there. With the exceptions noted above and those in the homes of a very few, wealthy individuals, pipe organs have almost exclusively been built for places of worship, and their repertoire has been associated with ritual or spirituality. Composers since the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods have also created a core of concert organ repertoire with especially important contributions coming from Bach, the German Romantic composers, and French composers of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries.

Who plays the organ?

In this complex universe, organists range from a handful of fulltime itinerant virtuosos whose livelihood derives almost exclusively from performance or recording, to a relatively large number of musicians who serve religious institutions in some regular, if not always fulltime capacity, to a difficult-to-tally number of part-time or amateur players serving churches on an occasional or volunteer basis, or playing the instrument for enjoyment. How can one estimate the numbers of such musicians? Many, though not all, join professional organizations such as the American Guild of Organists, the Royal College of Organists in England, the Royal Canadian College of Organists, or one of the denominational musical organizations like the Association of Anglican Musicians, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, or the Presbyterian Association of Musicians. Many of these began as chartered, degree granting organizations. The American Guild of Organists and both Royal Colleges still grant certificates to associates or fellows, but, as the numbers of fulltime professionals have dwindled, and as universities and music schools have instituted advanced degrees in organ, these organizations have shifted their mission and emphasis to advocacy, continuing education, and “grass roots” cultivation of the profession. Membership gives some indication of the numbers of highly engaged persons in the profession, though hardly a complete count of organists.

The American Guild of Organists reports almost 19,000 members, though not all may actually perform on the instrument. Perhaps more to the point, there are over 325,000 houses of worship in the United States. While many are very small, rural, or urban store fronts that probably do not use the organ in worship (with pianos, electronic keyboards, or instrumental combos as the most frequent alternatives), even a conservative guess would suggest that there may be more than 100,000 or 150,000 musicians who play the organ in such settings.

What repertoire do these musicians play?

Organ repertoire also ranges widely. For the recitalists (a population of perhaps few thousand globally), the appetite for new, technically challenging, often abstract, music is constant. While difficult to term the concert market a “growth industry,” extrapolating from listed concert programs in the professional press suggests that there may be as many as 10,000 performances (outside of worship) per year the United States featuring the organ in a primary role.

But, given the number of houses of worship with organs, and the number of annual services in each, the number of liturgical organ performances extends into many millions yearly! That is a staggering number outflanking symphony performances, opera, chamber and solo music, and music theatre. As such, it is certain that, as a community writ large, organists are the most productive class of musicians in American society.

Repertoire varies according to occasional demands. For musicians in mainstream, liturgical churches, the weekly fare will be a mix of historically based “core” repertoire (like the Bach preludes and fugues, works of Franck, Mendelssohn sonatas, or Widor and Vierne symphonies) and works that are chant or hymn centered (choral preludes, liturgical suites, or freestanding movements based on Gregorian plainsong). In settings where worship is more “casual,” “contemporary,” or “blended,” meaning that musical elements derive from contemporary sources, non-Western culture, or “pop,” organists will favor newer works reflecting the particular style of the community song or ritual. Gospel music, for instance, is an example of a particular cultural idiom with its own techniques, types of instruments (classically a Hammond organ), and performance practice. Furthermore, under the “blended” rubric, “classical” composers have created significant and effective music using gospel, spirituals, or pop as source material almost all intended for classic organs.

As a general rule of thumb, the cultural style and ritual practice of the community for which the music is to be performed dictates the musical qualities of the repertoire, a comment both seemingly obvious and worth considering. To compose for the organ effectively requires not only an understanding of the techniques and idiosyncrasies of the instrument, but of the culture surrounding it. Complex and wide-ranging styles can be joined through common musical details, often harmonic or textural practice, that certify linkage to common beliefs and practices unifying the faith group. Thus, a composer creating new organ music intended, for instance, for Roman Catholic liturgical worship, may predicate such works on chant, hymn tunes, contemporary song, even Gospel (for all are legitimate and commonly used musical expressions in American Roman Catholicism), but must also somehow consider the “Catholic ethos” of such music.

Difficulty also matters. Organists and publishers alike hunger for “good music” devoid of excessive demands on playing technique. With a broad ranging organist population, many players may have limited technical proficiency. Such is the complex calculus: music of high aesthetic value, capturing the endemic spirit of the occasional setting, idiomatically composed, making reasonable technical demands on the performers many of whom may be amateurs. The composer achieving that goal will have a loyal client base among today’s organists.

Organists, perhaps more than other instrumentalists, have systematic and ample opportunity for professional development. The American Guild of Organists, like the denominational musical organizations, offers frequent continuing education opportunities at the national, regional, and local levels. Chapter meetings as well as annual regional and national conventions focus heavily on workshops, master classes, resource sharing, and sales of materials like scores and recordings.

In the concert playing métier, there is much thirst for attractive new repertoire to promote the instrument as well as engage audiences. Ubiquitous questions concerning repertoire persist. Where are the mainstream composers writing for the organ? Who will be the next Messiaen (implying what single name will emerge as the sine qua non of organ composing for the generation)? What works are current this season?

In general, the hunger and receptivity to new music is significant in the organ community as long as the music serves the purpose and exploits the capacities of the instrument without presenting undue technical challenges. The loyalty to and enthusiasm for new repertoire within those parameters is both constant and demonstrable.

A metric of this level of seriousness is demonstrated by a study in a related market. Some years ago, a recording label did a survey of its buyers and asked them to list their favorite composers and their willingness to buy works of those composers. Perhaps unremarkably, 80 percent of respondents rated Beethoven their top choice, of which number about 5 percent were willing to buy new issues of the composer’s works. But when it came to a predominantly organ composer—in this case Charles-Marie Widor—only 5 percent considered him a top choice, but 95 percent of that group were willing to buy the recordings. Such is the intense loyalty of this clientele.

—Haig Mardirosian

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Haig Mardirosian is dean of academic affairs and professor of music at American University, Washington, D.C. He is a concert organist whose monthly editorial column, Vox Humana, appears in The American Organist.

Further Resources

  • A Guide to the Pipe Organ for Composers and Others by Sandra Soderlund, Wayne Leupold Editions, Inc., 1994.
  • A Young Person’s Guide to the Pipe Organ by Sandra Soderlund with drawings by Catherine Fischer, American Guild of Organists, 1994. (Can be viewed online at www.agohq.org)
  • Pulling Out all the Stops: The Pipe Organ in America, video or DVD available from American Guild of Organists

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Sandra Soderlund is primarily an organist although she also performs on harpsichord and both modern and early piano. She is organist at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley and teaches harpsichord and organ at Mills College in Oakland, California. Soderlund holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas. She is the editor of scholarly editions of keyboard works, including the Two-Part Inventions and Four Duets of J. S. Bach and the Livre d’Orgue of L.-N. Clérambault, as well as the author of articles on performance practices. Her book Organ Technique: An Historical Approach has been a standard text since its publication in 1980. The expansion of that book, entitled How Did They Play? How Did They Teach? A History of Keyboard Technique will appear this coming summer. She is on the editorial board of the Early Keyboard Journal. Soderlund has given recitals and workshops throughout the U.S., in Holland, Germany, and Korea, and most recently at Notre Dame in Paris. She has recorded for Arkay and Albany Records.