A look at the benefits and questions raised by composition competitions

Composition competitions, are they worth it?

As a fledgling composer I have had the joy of experiencing many things for the first time over the past 18 months. One of those things is entering composition competitions.

Not long after I began composing I set up a Twitter account dedicated to music (as opposed to the political journalism account I established a decade ago which has several thousand followers). I remember wondering if I'd ever gain any followers and whether other composers and musicians would accept me. What would music Twitter be like?

18 months later and with only a couple of hundred followers I can say that I have found it an invaluable resource. Twitter is where I heard about Score Relief, a competition run for the first time in 2021 to generate support for music industry workers impacted by the pandemic lockdowns.

Score Relief is run by The Cue Tube, a platform which provides resources and opportunities for screen composing (writing music to film). Each year The Cue Tube chooses a cause to support through Score Relief. This year the competition supported In Place of War, a global organisation that uses creativity in places of conflict as a tool for positive change.

A competition for female identifying wind band composers! https://t.co/Au1KqiGfjF

— Rosie Williams (@MusicalEscapism) July 7, 2022

I found out about Score Relief in the last week or so before entries closed. I had literally just moved house and was completely exhausted but I'd been curious about writing for screen for some time so I didn't want to miss such a wonderful opportunity.

A hugely popular competition, Score Relief received a deluge of entries with the 2022 competition receiving over one thousand. In events of this scale (and perhaps most composition competitions), it is unrealistic to assume your entry is going to get an award, and finding out about it at the last minute meant I was on a tight deadline.

I had also never scored anything for orchestra. Composing for large ensembles requires working with unwieldy electronic scores- though I am learning that it is possible to use a different approach to mine and just record the audio live (from a keyboard) then tweak it using software and leave out the score-writing step altogether!

This occurred to me only yesterday during an industry zoom event organised by AMCOS where an award winning Australian screen composer, Sean Tinnion took us through how he created the soundtrack for a feature length documentary. The trailer is well worth watching but please be aware the documentary is about animal abuse and footage is confronting.

Score Relief did require an actual score though, with specific instrument parts because the prize was a live recording of the winner's entry by a professional orchestra, an experience most aspiring composers can only dream of!

Ultimately I didn't have to finish scoring all the parts because as the deadline approached I got word that only the video was required for initial judging. While I did have a lot of the scoring done, I wasn't about to force myself to complete it unless required, given the looming deadline.

I am grateful that I did score as much as I did for the orchestra however because it started me on a journey I now feel I would be lost without. My finished entry is below and I think it works well. As you can see we were required to write the soundtrack to this fabulous animation. Keep in mind that some of the sound effects (including the clapping sticks between the scenes) came with the video and we were under strict instructions not to change them.

Writing about it again more than a year later makes me realise what incredible fun screen writing is and that my reward for participating in the competition was getting a taste for orchestral writing. I shudder to think about not having gone on to write the pieces I have which mean so much to me like Waiting, The Storm is Here, They Came For Us or Redemption.

Apologies that the score gets a little out of step with the sound. I obviously changed the tempo in the production version & with nearly 60 score videos of mine going online over the past fortnight, haven't had time to sort it out! Also keep in mind the soundtrack includes occasional sound effects intended to imitate an invasion.

The second competition I also found out about in the last weeks before entries were due and it was of a very different kind. Each year Orpheus Music (an Australian publisher of recorder music based in Armidale) runs a competition requiring compositions to address very specific criteria. Last year it was for a recorder sextet and this year it is for an eight part recorder ensemble.

Most of us are familiar with the type of recorder used in schools but this competition gave me the opportunity familiarise myself with the full range of recorders, some as tall as trees!

The 'golden-age' of the recorder is said to be mid 17th-mid 18th century, though there is still fascinating new music written for the instrument, particularly since the introduction of the contrabass & sub-contrabass recorders which have a unique sound.

Unfortunately the only recorder sounds I had to work with came from my notation program, Musescore and I found that the quality of the virtual/sampled instrument sounds provided something of a limitation to what I could write that I could be confident would sound good.

I initially wrote this piece which I called Morning Walk but after trying it with other woodwind instruments decided it sounded much better played by other instruments.

With only a fortnight to the deadline I decided to try something with more of an early music feel as I thought that would suit the Musescore recorder sound better. I came up with Apart and Together which I've had a lot of fun with since, scoring it for other instruments. My favourite is probably the brass quintet :-)

The prize included a publishing contract with Orpheus Music but after struggling with the Musescore imitations of recorders I decided I wasn't upset at having lost that particular reward. That is not to say that I didn't learn from writing those two pieces.

Apart and Together has a different feel from most of my music so I think what I've gained most from the competitions is that being forced to write to specific requirements allows me extend myself in ways I wouldn't, if left to my own devices.

What makes a competition worthwhile probably depends on how your investment is balanced with perceived rewards. I do think it's important to choose them wisely for that reason. Neither of the competitions I entered had an entry fee but many do. I write music quickly and I don't mind deadlines so spending only a few days on each entry seems like a good investment given I find them useful learning experiences.

On the other hand, I have had very little time to slow down and focus in on the qualities that specific audiences would be looking for. Now that I have my website built and my journalism work under better control, I look forward to focusing more on the needs of specific instruments, the qualities specific audiences are looking for and also building a community around my music so that I can engage more directly with musicians and audiences.