Chamber music, from duos to larger ensembles of one player per part, can teach us some of the most important lessons about the craft of composing. The creation of chamber music encourages an investigation into, and refinement of, myriad musical aspects, from timbre and harmonic colour to large-scale structure, and allows one to test out ideas through live performance with relative ease. Both theoretical and practical experience can be gained through ensemble writing, and whilst chamber music is worthy of a lifetime’s exploration in its own right, insights gleaned from its creation can inform everything from solo to orchestral works.
A Holistic Approach
The reciprocal relationship between art and life is always at the forefront of my mind when writing for a small group of players, and I feel it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that playing or writing a chamber work can teach us something about how to be good human beings too. Things to consider when writing chamber music include the following: are all musical elements (rhythm, melody, articulation, dynamics, etc.) being used to maximise the music’s communicative power? Will the notes on the page bring the best out in the performers? Are the aims for the piece being honoured, without a slavish adherence to theoretical ideas that may not in reality translate to an engaging musical narrative? To achieve these things, a composer will need to be empathic, inquisitive, determined, respectful, flexible, generous, idealistic, realistic, and self-aware.
Once a piece is written, if you are lucky enough to have it rehearsed, you will also need to be observant, open to constructive criticism, flexible (whilst remaining true to your ideals for the piece), and above all good at listening, and not just to the notes that the musicians play. It is likely, particularly at the early stages of your composing career, that your performers will have had many more years of experience than you, and you should take every opportunity to learn all you can from them. Direct dialogue between composer and players will always be more effective in a chamber music context than an orchestral one, where, due to finances and the need for order, there is simply not the time to receive feedback from everyone.
It takes a combination of humility and cast-iron inner confidence to be able to take criticism of your newly born opus: the slightest query can feel like a personal injury from which one may never recover, and my initial instinct tends to be wholesale acquiescence to a musician’s suggestions. But, whilst it is always good to take comments on board, you must stand up for what you have written if it deserves defending: is a passage you have written truly not idiomatic, or does it simply require a little more practice? Is there a compromise to be made that will in fact increase your music’s power? For example, perhaps that complex rhythm in the viola part really is needed to convey a sense of turmoil and frustration in a certain bar, but do there simultaneously need to be so many triple stops? Might a reduction in harmonic complexity in this passage result in your intended emotion being communicated more effectively and allow your viola player to concentrate more on music than on mechanics?
Whilst the vast majority of performers are endlessly dedicated to bringing out the best of any piece of music, they are only human, and I have seen exasperation (after, for instance, a long day of contemporary music workshops) boil over into outright dismissal of a composer’s ideas. If you are unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of such treatment, it can feel utterly devastating, and it is at this point where you have to draw upon reserves of strength (composing can be a crash course in learning to deal with rejection), honesty (is there an aspect of your technique, or score presentation you really need to work on?), and understanding (criticism is rarely personal, and at any rate, a nasty experience like this can, if approached constructively, provide a useful insight into the psychology of performance, and the vulnerabilities that it can engender).
The reality of a composer’s life, particularly if you are still classed as ‘emerging’, is that you will be asked to write more chamber music then orchestral music, as it is less expensive to commission and perform. Chamber works (particularly works around ten minutes for standard ensembles) can be performed easily by many different groups, and inserted into very varied concert programmes, even those that are otherwise solely made up of the classic great works. If a cellist in a piano trio is impressed by your work, you will find that your name travels along the musical grapevine and other commissions will ensue from chamber groups eager to play new music. The musical possibilities when writing music for an ensemble of one instrument per part are limitless and are an artistic reward in their own right, but I can think of no better play and training ground for a composer than writing chamber music: there are fewer places to hide inferior technique and lacklustre ideas, but triumphs are similarly easy to discern, and performers will champion your compositions, doing a lot of your marketing and public relations work for you!
Towards Rehearsal
Without doubt, the most important experience for a composer’s development is to hear their own works performed live. But before you get to this stage in the life of a new work, and no matter what one’s ability, a composer can (and should) frequently put their ‘performer’s hat’ on and interpret their own work: a vital part of the creative process for me involves looking at the score as if for the first time, and playing or singing what I have written, taking only the information currently on the page into account. By slowly playing a two- or three-part passage (perhaps by playing the piano and singing simultaneously) you can really hear how the parts fit together, and if there are any unintended clashes or un-deliberate parallels. It’s surprising how often you realise that what you have written isn’t quite what you meant: perhaps those triplet quavers are really a quaver and two semiquavers for instance (using a metronome can be very helpful in determining such things).
If for any reason you are unable to play an instrument, you can use computer playback, replaying over and over until you can fully appreciate how each part relates to each other. The danger when doing this is that you forget that real people will ultimately play your music: the computer can perform a series of semiquaver tetrachords extremely fast, but a double bassist can’t. But as long as this fact is at the forefront of your mind, it can be useful.
Duration in music often feels different when brought to life by human movement (such as the moving of a bow arm, or a deep intake of breath). For instance, in the build-up to a climactic point in the music – perhaps at the zenith of a long crescendo in a slow movement – some notes (and bar-lengths) preceding the high point may feel as if they need to be lengthened slightly. There’s something about getting to the arrival point that needs an extra hair’s breadth of time, much like one would take an extra-long breath before telling someone something of the utmost importance. Or perhaps there’s a hurry to arrive at the climactic point, and your unbroken run of quavers needs a single group of quintuplet quavers to underline this urgency. In another section, the omission of just one semiquaver in a fast passage, turning one of your 2/4 bars into a 7/16 bar, gives that extra dash of scherzando to your phrase: often, when made physical through performance, that extraneous note can feel heavy and unwieldy in the hands or vocal cords. Simply ‘performing’ a piece in one’s head is another option if the singing and playing are not possible: with enough practice you can bring a chamber-size work to life in your imagination, reading through the score at performance speed and getting a good idea of how the musical gestures feel in time, even if you are not certain you can really hear all the notes. Unhampered by any lack of technical skill on an instrument, one can experience the music at the pace it is designed to be heard at and ascertain whether the varying phrase-lengths ‘breathe’ as they should, or if they seem stilted and unnatural.
During this process, I try and make sure that only what is needed in the music is there on the page – bearing in mind that sometimes what is needed is a wall of raucous hemidemisemiquavers screeched out at fortissimo dynamic. In the arena of a string quartet, for instance, a feeling of inner conflict can be created with tiny glitches in a rhythmic unison between second violin and viola: the violin’s four semiquavers followed by a crochet destabilised and imbued with doubt by the viola’s quintuplet semiquavers, with the last semiquaver tied to the following crochet. Dyads can be weighted so that a mezzo-forte E is coloured with a hint of piano G♯ (in my mind’s eye, three measures of green, one of red), or a major seventh in a high tessitura can glint and rotate in the light as each player’s dynamics rise and fall non-concurrently. In the chamber context, these intricacies can have the greatest communicative power, and if framed well by the music of other members of the ensemble (or by silence) there can be great clarity in complexity, and a powerful emotional precision.
Of course, hearing one’s music rehearsed and performed by others is even better. For various, mostly practical reasons, the way to receive regular feedback as a developing composer from the people who really matter (e.g. the performers) is to write chamber music. Within hours of finishing a work (or indeed when only fragments are complete), a duo, trio or quartet of friends can be gathered together in a domestic room to bring what you have written to life. To my mind, chamber music is an excellent vehicle with which to test one’s ideas in the real world: on the one hand, training your mind and ear to appreciate a vast palette of timbral, harmonic, rhythmic and dynamic variations and combinations, and on the other furnishing a composer with a healthy dose of common sense. In critically listening to your chamber work, you can ascertain what it is worth being fastidiously specific about, and what is worth letting the performer use their inherent musicianship to intuit.
For instance, one may spend a long time worrying about where the oboist will breathe in the phrase at the writing desk, but in performance, alongside the other players, it becomes apparent that the artistry of the player communicates the impression of a continuing line, even during the intake of breath. This is not to say that you shouldn’t strive to write the most idiomatic music possible, with adequate time to breathe, but that only in real-life performance do those more nebulous aspects of instruments (that are impossible to discover from textbooks) become apparent. I personally have discovered that I worried far too much about the differing characteristics of tone colour across an instrument’s range, so clearly delineated in my orchestration books. Of course, these principles are extremely important to be aware of, and I would never expect a dyad comprising an oboe playing B♭ below middle C and a flute playing middle C to sound balanced in dynamic or timbre. But the difference between a written middle c on the horn (in my book classed as ‘deep and solid) and the g a fifth above it (described as ‘bright and heroic’) is nowhere near as monumental as I once expected, and a skilled player will be able to achieve many tone colours over most of the instrument’s range.
Much as a good host ensures that all their dinner guests are involved in the conversation and appreciated for the individual character traits they bring to the table, a composer who seeks to create a work that is more than the sum of its instrumental parts will be cognizant of how the players interact within the group on many levels. In an ideal world, idiomatic instrumental writing, democratic distribution of material, tautness of structure, and clarity of notation will all work together to create a direct and compelling interpretation of the composer’s musical message. It is rare to achieve such symbiosis: one either tends to think too much of practicalities (the piece ‘works’ really well, and is beloved by the performers; but does the large-scale harmonic structure that was meant to provide a sense of tension throughout the entire movement function as intended?) or to too slavishly follow a philosophical/technical intention for the piece (each instrument’s music is strongly delineated with a distinctive character, but, by sticking so rigidly to the compositional aim, is the narrative of the work one-dimensional in performance?). However, the point is to carry on trying, and chamber music is an ideal vehicle with which to continue failing at achieving the perfect balance between the theoretical and human aspects of a musical composition.
The Limitless Possibilities of Conventional (and Unconventional) Ensembles
As your catalogue of chamber works expands, there will be times where you will want to write for an instrument that is a complete mystery to you, and most players –particularly of less common instruments – are only too keen to show you how they work. I had personal experience of this recently when I was asked to write a short piece for solo accordion. Apart from what one can see (i.e. keys and buttons played with two hands) I had no clear idea of how the instrument functioned, and it took two drafts of the piece before I was able to fully comprehend how to write what I wanted. A small misunderstanding during my initial meeting with the accordionist (concerning the lefthand ‘stradella’ (chord-playing) keyboard) meant that the chords that I had written (which I thought would sound like a towering pile of thirds – B♭ major on top of B major on top of C major triads, with a range of over two octaves) instead came out as a violent cluster chord, with all notes contained within one octave. These mishaps will always happen, and the important thing is to be flexible enough to partially (or completely) rewrite your music if necessary: in this case I realised that, with the use of various registers – different octave doublings and timbres controlled by register buttons on the accordion, analogous to organ stops – I could create the sense of harmonic expansiveness I was aiming for, using much simpler harmony. It’s easy to feel embarrassed when making mistakes like this, but as long as the quality of your musical ideas is good, and you bring your sketches to performers with a curious, good-humoured, and respectful attitude, you can be ensured of a creatively enriching experience.
Other than music of exceptional quality, the thing that performers place great value on is evidence that the composer really knows how to write for their instrument. A player will devote all their energies to mastering a fiendishly difficult passage if they feel it has true artistic merit and is written by someone who has made an effort to understand the characteristics of their instrument and how it works. With this as a foundation, they will be willing to experiment, pushing technical boundaries and attempting to make what might initially seem impractical passages work: they may even discover they are able to do something new on their instrument as a result.
It can be a wonderful thing, finding one has little or nothing to say in response to hearing a run-through of a piece for the first time: it can mean that you have transmitted all that needed to be said to the performers and the audience through the markings on the page. This leaves you free to discuss those aspects of a piece that can’t be notated in a score: subtle aspects of interpretation, the philosophy of the piece and its performance. Perhaps most important is hearing the chamber musicians talk about the practicalities behind the musicality: how playing a particular melodic passage in (for instance) a particular part of the bow and strings when it occurs in each part means that the same graininess, or airiness, will communicate a similar emotion to the audience. Being witness to a discussion about tone colour and its production between two players of similar or different instruments can awaken a musical sense that can too easily lie dormant in composers, when notes, rhythms, and dynamics jostle for attention to be fixed in time and space. These are experiences that a composer should store in their memory bank, so that when writing, the note, the technique to play that note, and the physical gestures that produce both can be brought naturally to mind and symbiotically inform and inspire the musical material as it is created.
Paradoxically, it is possible as a composer to be absolutely clear about what you want in a score at the same time as being flexible and open to multiple interpretations of your work. Consider the playwright, who, having enough confidence in their work, will allow an actor to deliver a line at a slightly more rapid tempo than they had heard in their mind’s ear, if this results in a more convincing portrayal. The words spoken will be the same, whoever the actor is, but pitch, speed, and emphasis will all vary slightly: the strength of the message contained within the line has to be clear enough to not only withstand these differing presentations, but to positively be enhanced by them. It’s much the same in music (although with different variables – for example I would draw the line at letting performers alter my pitches!), and if my experiences of writing and rehearsing chamber music have taught me anything, it’s that sometimes leaving ‘space’ for a player’s own musical expression and interpretation can enhance your work in ways you might never have predicted and make you aware of aspects of your work that you may have previously been unaware of.
As a final note, it’s worth mentioning that, although being able to hear what you have written is vastly preferable, not everyone will have the privilege of access to musical friends who are generous with their time and feedback. In this case, learning from the existing chamber repertoire becomes even more important (although essential for all composers, of course) and, as long as the virtual is complemented by going to as many live concerts as practical and affordable, it is possible to watch and listen to vast amounts of chamber music without leaving the house or spending any money. Online concerts such as those from Wigmore Hall in London can bring the world of chamber music into one’s own home, and many scores can be perused online for no or little cost, either on publisher’s websites, the Petrucci Music Library (for out-of-copyright scores) or via a subscription service like nKoda (for which some colleges or universities have a subscription to access for free).
Nowadays one can write for any combination of instruments one pleases: there are a growing number of ensembles comprising instruments that composers of the past would have never thought of writing for. (The Hermes Ensemble springs to mind: with their line-up of soprano, clarinet, harp, and double bass, they have created an entirely new chamber repertoire.) Really you should write exactly what you want to write, and if you have three good friends who are all tuba players, then why not try a tuba trio? Often, when writing for unusual combinations, your imagination is stretched in ways that it might not be with more ‘standard’ combinations: writing for three low brass instruments might lead you to think more clearly about intervals (you’d need to be careful not to write too many closely spaced chords in the lowest register, as you’d run the risk of creating a sort of harmonic sludge) and tessitura (yes, one could allocate low, middle, and high ranges to each tuba, but would the first tuba be fatigued within minutes, having to play all those high notes so continuously? You want to keep your friends, after all!).
These adventures with unusual combinations will be tremendously satisfying, and the innovative musical tricks that you come up with will come to mind when writing for more conventional ensembles: for instance, the hocketing technique that you thought of for your two lowest tubas might be applied to the whole bass section in your new orchestral piece, creating a sense of thrilling instability in the work’s roots. I recently completed a work for renaissance recorder quartet: as these instruments sound vastly better when played only diatonically, I decided to use two recorders at the modern A440 pitch, and two at Baroque pitch (A415, one semitone lower). With this combination it was possible to create chromatic music using only diatonic notes: the complication lay in that both As (i.e. A440 and A415) were notated as the note A in the score (not A and G♯, as you would hear). By the time I had finished this piece, I not only felt like a musical puzzle master, which was tremendously satisfying, but I felt as if I had honed my ability to write music in which all parts were in constant dialogue; to achieve chromaticism there was a great deal of back-and-forth between the pairs of recorders in modern and baroque pitch. As the work is very fast at times, it was vital to pay attention to the length of melodic/rhythmic groupings, which had to be short enough so that the music wouldn’t get too comfortable in one tonality, but long enough so that each player would be able to maintain a sense of the pulse (e.g. hocketing single quavers around the group would be impossible to maintain at a regular pulse for more than a couple of beats).
Nevertheless, the most performed work in my catalogue is a nine-minute piano trio: one of the best ways to get one’s work widely performed is to write short pieces for standard ensembles that can easily be slotted into a variety of concert programmes. Whilst a half-hour string quartet by a contemporary composer might deter more conservative audience members from attending their local music society’s concert (a harsh, but often true, fact), a short modern piece in an otherwise classical programme can often turn out to be the highlight of the evening for many attendees. It is likely that, as you are trying to make your mark as a composer, your fellow performers will be attempting to do just the same, forming duos, trios, quartets, and quintets to promote to concert societies and to enter into competitions: it is worth being pragmatic and writing for ensembles that are very common at least some of the time.
Taking Inspiration from the Canon
Each ensemble has its own challenges, and when writing a string quartet or a piano trio it is particularly easy to feel weighed down by the great works in the canon as well as inspired by them. However, many of the great works (from classical to present-day) do seem to have many commonalities in terms of their approach to orchestration, register, and distribution of melodic material which a composer would be wise to take heed of, even if no pre-existing work is consciously used as a model for what one is writing. For instance, listening to the piano trios of Schubert, Ravel, and Birtwistle reveals many more similarities than differences despite the fact that the latter’s trio eschews the conventional four-movement form of its predecessors, encompassing three distinct sections in a single, fifteen-minute movement.
The opening of Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor (1914) is exquisitely beautiful; the chordal melody in 8/8 (divided as 5/8 plus 3/8, in reference to the Basque zortico dance, which is notated in five beats) is so beguilingly elegant that all is needed, after the initial presentation of the theme in the piano over a dominant pedal, is a repetition of the melody with the addition of the violin and cello in unison, two octaves apart. The violin and cello encapsulate the piano in this second statement of the theme, the piano’s chords in second inversion so as to provide the chordal melody that all three instruments contribute to with a wider range span and greater lustre. Both string instruments are in a relatively high (but not stratospheric) part of their range, the cello beginning on E above middle C with the violin two octaves higher. The effect is that of a melody that feels translucent and luminous, the pianissimo dynamic meaning that register, string (both instruments play on their top strings), bow pressure, and bow length (an average of two notes per slur) all contribute to the feeling of lightness and airiness. The two-octave span between the two strings also means that each instrument has its own registral identity – the violin above the right hand of the piano, the cello below it, and the left hand of the piano below the cello. Barring the bell-like doubling of the E above middle C in the piano left hand, none of the four parts overlap, resulting in a timbre that is devoid of any muddiness: it sounds as if simultaneously made of velvet and air.
In the opening of Ravel’s trio, the three instruments join in the presentation of one idea, with the combination of each player’s timbres blending to enhance the chordal melody. Another common texture is that of two complementary or contrasting ideas (frequently melody and accompaniment in the classical canon) divided between the musicians, most commonly with the two string parts either playing in rhythmic unison to provide chordal accompaniment to a piano melody, or stating the theme in either octaves or (for instance) thirds. Both Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 (1827) and Birtwistle’s Trio (2010) use this method of dividing material a great deal throughout their works, with the only real difference being that Birtwistle’s material for the strings, whilst it is often very similar and in contrast to that for the piano, is not in total rhythmic unison (as it often is in the Schubert). In all three works, great interest and variety is achieved by varying the manner in which instruments combine in emphasis or contradict or comment on each other’s material: in Ravel’s trio there is a greater fluidity of function, the cello one minute adding definition and sparkle to a piano chord with a pizzicato; the next having a flowing arpeggiated conversation with the violin whilst the piano plays the melody. In Birtwistle’s work, there is a more sustained contrast between the strings and piano, such that it takes on a structural as well as textural function: here, as Erica Jeal states, ‘the piano is a different beast, insidiously introducing the stuttering, mechanical rhythms that will dominate the second section, the work’s core. Having won the strings over, it is the piano that begins to rein the music in again; a quiet, hesitant dialogue ensues, by the end of which all three instruments sound like exhausted automatons.’1
Some groupings, such as clarinet, violin, and piano, present different conundrums depending on how you think about them: is it an overcrowded duo? Or a trio that lacks the amount of strength in the bass register that you would usually expect? How do the two melody instruments relate to the piano? I like to spend time thinking about each instrument’s individual characteristics, and how one might emphasise and subvert them, before looking at other works for the same ensemble. The presence of two high melody instruments in a clarinet trio might lead you to wonder how it might work if you were to give only the piano a melodic line in one section, making the violin and clarinet the bass instruments. Or perhaps you might decide to experiment with a four-part canon, with the clarinet and violin in the middle of the tessitura. Looking at works such as Charles Ives’s Largo (1901), where for long stretches only the clarinet and piano play, might give you the courage to do something similar, giving the performers and audience a chance to luxuriate in each instrument’s tone colour. (When composing, it can often be difficult not to use all the instruments all the time: I often have to remind myself that this is not essential!) Other composers, such as Hans Gal and Aram Khachaturian, often share the melody equally between the two instruments (each alternating between faster and slower melodic material, as if in a perpetual conversation), with unison melodies over chordal piano writing at climactic points.
Just as when writing for piano trio, maintaining a degree of registral integrity for each instrument when all are playing is often advisable for textural clarity; but in ensembles of three or more very differentiated timbres, there is just as much inspiration to be found in the jarring of tone colours as there is in the blending of them. A violin and clarinet playing a unison low G (a fourth below middle C) will sound very different to a unison high E on three ledger lines: in the former, the warmth of the clarinet’s G may add a smoothness and mellowness to the graininess of the violin’s open string, but near the top of each instrument’s range, it will be the stridency of the clarinet that will add steel to the colour, potentially overpowering the violin at loud dynamics. What might adding a sforzando hit in the piano on the same note add to the texture? If nothing else, it is a stimulating mental exercise to imagine how each instrument’s varied characteristics might bolster, develop, deepen, conflict with, reduce, or cancel out another’s, and how following or breaking established compositional principles might inform the emotional and structural narrative of your work.
The ensemble types that you find tricky will largely depend on your musical background: if you grew up playing in a brass band, then a brass quintet should be within your comfort zone, whilst a string trio will feel like a foreign land. In my case, when writing a brass quintet, I had a full grasp of each instrument’s characteristics, including extended techniques; but in rehearsals it became apparent that my trumpet writing was quite unrelenting, making the work extremely difficult to play. All that was needed was a few extra rests, and a more equal division of the high notes: no more than eight beats were changed to remedy the situation, but these brief resting points made all the difference. Writing chamber music is reward enough in itself: the limitless timbres and forms will keep you busy for a lifetime, if you so desire. As long as your work is rooted in respect for your performers as well as the drive to create stimulating, communicative work, you cannot go wrong, and you will learn much about yourself and your fellow musicians along the way.
