[Music has several primary characteristics. In a series of blog postings I’m calling “Music in Pieces,” I’m looking at them one at a time from the perspective of my own work. Now that I have a “body of work,” I can speak to how I handle each “piece” generally.]

For me, the piano is a perfect metaphor for the nexus of music writing and the selection of what will produce the actual sound. I had a brief period in my pop music career where I played the instrument just enough to accompany a few songs I’d written. But a lack of regular access to keyboards, combined with a general lifetime aversion to anything smelling of practice, doomed my skills. (Even earlier, when I was studying music theory in my 20s, I was confronted with the fact that facility on the piano was going to be a requirement for the only professional direction my studies could then take me — college music theory instruction. I failed there too!)

But in my current status as a general composer, an inability to play an instrument is no excuse for not writing for it. One selects which instrument(s) based on 1) their range (how high and low they play), 2) their timber (sound quality), 3) their inherent characteristics (how they’re played, what they can do, and how I feel about the results), and 4) access (an ensemble including this instrument which might perform your piece). Conspicuously absent from the list is “I can play the instrument.” It is assumed that a knowledge of #’s 1 through 3 is a part of your studies, and it’s where I spend a lot of my time when writing.

#4, of course, is the toughie. I’ve made a conscious decision to ignore it in most cases, since I really don’t have direct access to full orchestras, even string quartets, and I want the experience of writing for such. Luckily, the University of Kentucky New Music Ensemble has provided a few ensembles I’ve specifically written for. And then, there’s the Lexington Chamber Chorale! But I don’t want my studies (and the works they produce) to be exclusively dictated by my access to instrumental performers.

But back to the main discussion. As I mentioned, the piano is a great illustration, since to write for it I must be aware of, and allow for, the physical capabilities of the human hand. Accomplished pianists can do incredible things. (I’ve looked at a lot of such works, and listened to their performances, and am always amazed!) And, as a solo instrument, it’s almost unmatched in its ability to present a huge range of musical ideas, one reason for its omnipresence in the world of classical music (and its selection as a primary composition platform historically). But it can’t hold pitches indefinitely like a violin, and a piano key pressed offers essentially one timbre produced by a felt hammer striking a stretched string. (Yeah, contemporary composers leverage nontraditional ways of playing, and electronic keyboards are a whole ‘nother item, but we’ll hang with the analog keyboard played traditionally here, as I have.) So the music you write for keyboard has to reflect these things. I have a keyboard, and will stretch my hands to be sure a passage is physically possible, but the rest requires a thorough knowledge of what a piano can do, and reflects the traditional skills a pianist will have developed playing classical piano repertoire.

If you want a sustained, continuous-sounding melodic line in your composition, violins and their cousins are, perhaps, the most versatile, one of the reasons orchestras have large numbers of them providing their core sound. But instruments played by blowing into/across them are a really great and powerful sound. I play absolutely none of them. (I remember my dad telling me he’d studied French horn as a graduate student — he was a pianist and singer by trade — presumably to learn what the instrument can do. He never used that knowledge in composing.) I, luckily, can write a French horn line and have my computer play it back. But there are a host of things peculiar to the French horn which my electronic tools don’t reflect. I just have to know how a horn player produces and changes pitch, how long s/he can supply breath to a note, what happens when s/he adjusts how the hand is held in the bell…Lots of details! I have leveraged the French horn in several compositions which have actually been played by real instrumentalists, so it looks like I’m doing OK there!

Bottom line, I want to select a French horn as an instrument in a composition based on how it sounds playing the melodic line. I can’t write that line without attending to all the things the player does and can do.

The composing process is further complicated by what happens when instruments play together — they all vary in loudness and other characteristics. The process becomes hopelessly complicated if you are “starting from scratch,” but 500 years of classical composing and performance in the Western European tradition give an enormous number of examples. Some ensembles are pretty standard in that world (string quartet, brass quintet, chamber orchestra, etc.) so you can go listen to how a composer leverages the instrument there — and you can write knowing there are existing ensembles out there who might could perform your piece. I have strayed only occasionally from traditions there, dictated by available instruments, and so-called “programmatic” interests — having an instrument representing something non-musical, such as a snake (“The Great Barrier Reef”) or a child playing on a beach (“The Coast”).

I would be remiss if I didn’t mentioned percussion, an arena that represents literally thousands of different instruments, all with their own sounds and playing requirements, With that, I started out small — “September” only has a tympani (“kettle drum”); Je danse, J’apprends uses 5 different percussion instruments, but only one at a time; then “The Coast” goes ape with an entire section with five percussion instruments, as well as several others in various places. What fun!

Settling on instrumentation for a piece is one of the most entertaining and satisfying things that live in my current studies. And, right now, that means extracting some wonderful musical ideas from the ordinary piano! (I’ll now end this so’s I can work on my latest piano piece!)