Where to start
I found Rory’s last blog post on text so interesting, so I thought I would continue in a similar direction and share some of my own tips on text, while also helping you to understand the general starting process of writing a composition… Words are crucial to choral composition. You have the opportunity not just to communicate beautiful sound and emotion through your music, but also to create meaning and conversation through your words. When both music and text are intertwined within each other, each as important as each other, you will compose something truly magical.
As I said in my previous post, choosing a text is perhaps the most difficult part of the composing process for me, but it is also one of the most exciting. No matter how much you can plan the style, structure, metre or mood of a piece beforehand, all those preliminary decisions will go out the window when you find your text.
If you’re stuck, I would strongly prompt you to turn to the Bible. It’s no secret that a large amount of well-known choral music is set around biblical texts, and that’s for a few reasons.
Firstly, choral music is naturally associated with the church because of its origins in that context, and most choirs will frequently sing sacred music as part of their regular repertoire. For me, biblical texts are often where I find the most natural beauty, fluidity and poetry, as well as the deep love that the great truths are steeped in. Practically, copyright laws also make it easier to use the Bible than other texts, so if you’re not particularly aware of those restrictions, the Bible can be a great place to start. Whether you intend your piece to be sung in a sacred context or not, I would encourage you to give a biblical text a go!
I also love setting secular texts and poems, and I especially enjoy setting words which have a particularly clear narrative, which you can illustrate through the music. I think the best choral music tells a story both with words and notes, with the two being completely intertwined into one unified voice. I would encourage you to find a text that make you personally feel something, that resonates deeply within you and that has a message of some sort that you would like to communicate with your music. The compositional process is so much more personal and enjoyable if the text means something to you, and it makes writing the music much more natural. Maybe you want to write your own words, and that can also be a very personal and beautiful way of connecting yourself in your music.
The real question is what do you do with your text once you have found it. This will be different for every composer, but I like to sit down with a pencil and annotate the text. I’ll underline the words I think are most important, or that stand out to me, and I’ll draw arrows to show the direction of the natural movement, finding where the points of climax are and where the phrases rise and fall.
A pencil and paper are definitely a great place to start with any composition. It’s easy to fall into the temptation of using software like Sibelius from the very start, but I find it more helpful to start on paper and work towards putting it into Sibelius later in the process. I like to draw mind maps when I’m planning a piece. I’ll draw pictures, or write words that come to mind when I think of the text, and at this stage can begin to build up a general structure based around just the words. It’s then only at that point, when I’ve got to grips with the words and have decided loosely on the structure of them, that I will go and sit by the piano to improvise some chords.
Now I must put a disclaimer here, and be completely honest in saying that I am a terrible pianist! I think that there is a real stigma that to be able to compose well you must be a pianist. It is helpful to have some basic keyboard skills, and I have naturally developed my own as I’ve gone along, but it is not a necessity. You might surprise yourself by how easily you can pick up playing the piano if you give it a try. If you’re a singer like me, then maybe you find yourself singing melodies and harmonies in your head. If so, then a great alternative way for you to start composing could be to record yourself on your phone and work out your harmonies from there. There are some great, free apps for multi-tracking on your phone that can help if you think this might be something that could work for you! Ultimately, I would encourage you to try different things and see what works for you- composing is a very personal process, so do what feels natural for you and enjoy the daunting but exciting stage of starting your composition!
Written by Stephanie Devlin