This past fall was the first time I was on the receiving end of a call for scores. Looking through 200+ submissions and talking to some of the composers who sent materials in taught me more about the process than submitting ever did. It also gave me a really eye-opening look at what a field of applications looks like. Some composers are veterans of the application process, but some newer composers make mistakes in their application and follow-up that are easily avoidable, and could help them make their applications much stronger. If you’re a veteran of the process, all this is likely old hat, but I hope it will be useful for composers who are new(er) to submissions. Plenty of people have more experience than I do with receiving and reviewing submissions; I hope they’ll feel free to comment and add their thoughts.
This post arose out of a conversation with Meerenai Shim, who wrote up an excellent post on submitting unsolicited scores to performers, which I highly recommend. Some of the ideas below are applicable to those inquiries as well.
The Application
Follow the instructions
I know, this sounds obvious, but it’s worth mentioning just because it’s so important. Read through instructions carefully, and submit the materials requested (and only the materials requested). If the call asks for 2-3 pieces, submit 2-3 pieces. If it asks for recordings, send recordings. If the call does not request a cover letter, don’t send a cover letter.
Another way of thinking of it is: don’t make substitutions. If a call asks for live recordings, don’t send MIDI. If it asks for scores as PDFs and recordings as MP3s, don’t send Sibelius files and AIFFs. If it asks for finished pieces, don’t send works-in-progress. If it asks for a resume and a bio, send both (not one or the other). If the call requests you submit online at their website, don’t send the application in via e-mail.
Of the applications we received, I’d guess that roughly 10-20% did not follow the directions in some way. Our approach is to do the best we can to understand what the composer and the music are all about, despite whatever problems there may be, but the mistakes can be time-consuming or difficult, or leave us feeling like we don’t know what we need/want to know about the composer.
Tailor and proofread your materials
Keep the information in your materials relevant to the discipline at hand. Your composition resume should consist only of information that supports and explains your experience as a composer. In addition to your compositional work, this could include your experience as a performer, or, if your work is interdisciplinary, your experiences in those other disciplines, but it should all lead back to your musical work in some way. I’d recommend keeping one resume for composition opportunities and one for non-musical work at the very least; you may find that further tailoring would make sense for you. If you’re a student, have your teacher look over your resume. Chances are, they’ve seen tons of materials from emerging composers and can give you good advice.
Tailoring also means preparing your application with the spirit of the project or the interests of the organizing group in mind. Read over the description of the opportunity carefully, and do your best to make sure your application is faithful to the intentions of the opportunity. In the case of Wild Rumpus, our Commissioning Project is about commissioning brand-new works, and our group is interested in collaboration because of the creative risks we believe it encourages composers to take. We received many proposals to re-orchestrate old pieces, and while some of those pieces were very strong, those proposals weren’t as inherently engaging to our interests as applications that proposed new works (or didn’t mention a proposed work at all).
Look over your materials carefully before you submit them. Does your score file include all the performance notes we’ll need to understand your score? Are the dynamics marked? Instruments clearly and correctly labeled? Graphic notation and/or extended technique notation clearly explained? If the score is handwritten, is it legible? Are the pages in each file rotated correctly and in the right order?
Do your best to get live recordings
Live recordings are always preferable to MIDI, and they are definitely not equivalent; MIDI is always at a significant disadvantage. Jurors reviewing submissions may not all (a) have enough experience with MIDI to mentally “get around” the inaccuracies and lesser sound quality, or (b) be willing to take the extra time with your score to figure out how the piece should “really” sound. If you’re lucky enough to have access to performers, do your best to wrangle a recording. The higher-quality that recording is, the better, but a halfway decent recording is better than MIDI.
Where MIDI is really absolutely necessary, do your best to make sure that the sounds are as faithful as possible. At the very least, the sounding pitches in your score should be accurate. (Artificial harmonics that sound as parallel fourths is a particularly common problem. Transposed scores that sound as written instead of at the transposition are less common, but definitely memorable.) The more high-quality your MIDI instruments are, and the more you can incorporate samples for your extended techniques, the better. Putting together a high-quality MIDI mock-up is an art in and of itself that’s worth taking time to master, if you have little access to performers, or if you often write for large ensembles.
Contact
Focus your questions
Imagine that the contact person you’re writing to wants to help you, but has hundreds (or thousands) of e-mails in his/her inbox. When you write to him/her, keeping your questions specific and short is greatly appreciated, as is asking a question only if you can’t find the answer elsewhere. It always helps to check the organization’s website and re-read the call, just to make sure the answer isn’t covered there. I can only speak for myself, but I tend to prioritize e-mails that (a) can be answered quickly, or (b) cannot be answered by anyone else. As Meerenai mentioned in her post, research is critical.
Be patient if/when you follow up
There’s an opportunity that hasn’t announced their results yet, and you’re anxiously awaiting the response (because you didn’t forget about it!). A polite follow-up is perfectly fine, although it may not be that fruitful. At least over here, we announce things as soon as we’re able, so if you haven’t heard anything, that’s because there’s nothing to tell yet. Personally, I don’t mind those e-mails, though there isn’t much I can do with/for them. I could imagine a staff member at a larger organization not having time to respond.
Respect the people on the other end
A call for scores is a group’s way of inviting you to contact them, but the other side of that is that, to them, your submission is a sufficient way for them to get started getting to know you, and the ball’s essentially in their court. While it may be tempting to immediately follow up on your application, in the hopes that it will make your application stand out, have faith that your work speaks for itself and will represent you and your interests in all the ways that matter to the judges.
All the rules that apply in other social situations apply with contact people running calls for scores. Extra unsolicited materials, insistently pursuing a meeting or extra attention for your portfolio, or reprimanding a contact person for not responding to your extra materials/requests are unlikely to make your application stand out in the way in which you’d like. Remember, you’re a total stranger, and an interest in further contact has to be mutual. Until it’s past the time they should have announced results, let them follow up with you. Friendly, non-creepy contact is always the way to go.
On to the Next One
Disclaimer: This last thing isn’t really advice from a person who runs calls for scores so much as a suggestion from an emerging composer who also applies for stuff. So, you know, take it as you will.
A composer friend recently told me that he doesn’t apply to opportunities because he doesn’t handle rejection well, which seemed to me like a completely understandable impulse, but one that will end up only hurting him in the long run. I’d guess that I’ve been applying for opportunities in earnest for about six years, and I still have no ability to predict what opportunities will/won’t accept me. Let someone else decide whether or not you’re what they’re looking for that year. When you don’t apply at all, you’re basically making that decision for them.
Most composers are rejected for things fairly often, probably more often than not, and that’s a normal part of the process. Try not to take it to heart—the music you sent might not be right for them this time around, but it will likely be right for somebody else. It may even be right for this same group, just in a different year. Applications are basically a way of fishing for the people and the groups that your music engages. Keep giving your music the chance to be found by those people.
This post is really just a tip-of-the-iceberg post, since topics like a good MIDI mock-up, a well-tailored resume, or a beautifully written/engraved score could really be their own posts or series of posts (or overarching life pursuits), and I don’t claim to be an expert on any of them. But the process of reviewing submissions for our first two opportunities made me realize how important these basics are, and I hope this is helpful for those of you who are new to submissions. For those (thousands? millions?) of you who have more experience reviewing submissions than I do, I hope you’ll feel free to add your ideas in the comments. Happy applying!
Julian Day is a composer and sound artist based in Sydney, Australia. Described as “an epic and intimate formalist”, he creates evocative works through simple yet often lateral means. His work inhabits a lush and frequently dark world of slowed down sounds, broken patterns and basic geometries, influenced by conceptual art, cracked media and pop culture. Recent works include Ascent for 100 flutes, Totem for skipping CDs and Ceremony for multiple spatialized synthesizers. Much of his work is site-specific and collaborative, taking place in spaces as varied as railway sheds, former meat markets and even on New York’s Central Park lake.
Educated in both mathematics and music and recently employed as an economist, Dutch composer Ruben Naeff (1981) finds himself in an attempt to comprehend the world and set it to music. His broad interest led to many interdisciplinary pieces like De Bètacanon (about the hard sciences), The Dancing Dollar (about the current financial crisis), and the YouOpera (about our lives online). Currently, he is a recipient of the HSP Huygens Talent Scholarship from the Dutch government to study composition with Michael Gordon in a master’s program at New York University.
Named by NPR as one of 100 composers under 40 you should know, flutist and composer Andrea La Rose is making waves in the New York music scene and beyond. Her pride and joy since 2002 has been her work as a flutist/composer/board member with the punk-classical antagonists known as Anti-Social Music, most recently (late 2010) touring the Ukraine and contributing to an album of remixes of songwriter Franz Nicolay. She has also been musically involved with thingNY, baj, Lone Wolf Tribe, and Mohair Timewarp. Print and online publications from Chamber Music America, to New Music Connoisseur, to Dusted have said lovely things about her fluting and composing prowess. Funding for her musical endeavors have been generously provided by the American Music Center and Meet the Composer. Since August 2009, she has been contributing her talents as a Music Teacher at the Franconian International School in Erlangen, Germany. When she is not making music in some fashion, she is quaffing beer and whipping up culinary magic in her kitchen.
Elizabeth Lim is a second-year doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School, where she is studying composition with Dr. Robert Beaser. Noted for its unique expressiveness and verve, Elizabeth’s music has been widely performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and she has received honors and recognition from ASCAP, BMI, the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI), the National Association of Composers, USA (NACUSA), the New England Philharmonic, and the Society for New Music, among others.
Australian composer Nicole Murphy completed her Masters of Music at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in 2011, under the tutelage of Dr. Gerardo Dirié. During her undergraduate degree, she studied under composer Gerard Brophy, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Music (Composition) with First Class Honours.
Jonathan Russell is a composer, clarinetist, conductor, and educator who is active in a wide variety of music, from classical to experimental to klezmer to church music. Especially known for his innovative bass clarinet and clarinet ensemble compositions, his works for bass clarinet duo, bass clarinet quartet, bass clarinet soloists, and clarinet ensembles have been performed around the world and are radically expanding the technical and stylistic possibilities of these genres. He has received commissions from ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, Empyrean Ensemble, ADORNO Ensemble, Classical Revolution, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Imani Winds, and DZ4, and performances from numerous other ensembles and performers, including the Berkeley Symphony, San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, the BluePrint Project, the Great Noise Ensemble, the new music bands FIREWORKS, Capital M, and Oogog, pianist-percussionist Danny Holt, and pianists Sarah Cahill, Lisa Moore, Lara Downes, and Matthew McCright. Upcoming projects include compositions for So Percussion, the guitar-percussion duo The Living Earth Show, the new music ensemble REDSHIFT, and a new Bass Clarinet Concerto commissioned by the Bass Clarinet Commissioning Collective. His works are published by Potenza Music and BCP Music, and have been commercially recorded by the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo and pianist Jeffrey Jacob.
Jeff Treviño’s recent projects include a one-act musical theater adaptation of Anthony Ha’s award-winning science-fiction story, 
Born in Athens, Greece in May 1978, Nicolas Tzortzis has been living in Paris, France, since 2002. He studied instrumental and electronic composition with Philippe Leroux at the CRD de Blanc Mesnil, musical theatre composition with Georges Aperghis at the Hochschule der Kunste in Bern, Switzerland and Computer Aided Composition at the University of Paris 8 under the direction of Horacio Vaggione and José Manuel Lopez-Lopez. In 2009-2010 he attended the CURSUS 1 of composition and computer music at the IRCAM and he has been selected to do the CURSUS 2 for the years 2010-2012, where he will present a large-scale work for piano and live electronics. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Montreal, under the supervision of Philippe Leroux.
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