> And that's the point, isn't it? To understand the instrument in a > sufficient manner you surely have to play it to a level of > competence, and to have a knowledge of the music it grew up with and > was designed for. The unkeyed nsp excel(led) at divisions. The keyed
This is too limiting -- many composers have written excellent pieces for instruments they could not play; take Mozart's works for clarinet, or Schubert's octet, for 8 instruments he (to the best of my knowledge) did not play... When composing a piece for some particular instrument it is important is an understanding of what the instrument can do, and even more so what the instrument can do well. Mozart's clarinet concerto in A Major lets the clarinet shine, not because he gained played the instrument, but because he understands it (I assume that he learned a lot by talking with and listening to his friend Anton Stadler, a virtuoso clarinet player). In my music course this was called "idiomatic writing", and while (just now) searching for a good, succinct definition of it (as the Grove wasn't helpful) I came across the following gem: "In the music conservatory universe, we have a name for respecting an instrumentÂ’s voice: idiomatic writing."[1] The major part of respecting the voice of the pipes is realising it includes drones. That does mean it's not feasible to write a piece for bagpipes that modulates every bar or even every couple of bars. Respecting the instrument's voice, to me, doesn't mean you can only write in the style that's traditional or common for the instrument but it does mean that, as a composer, you make use of the techniques and range wherein the instrument excels, and avoid those where it doesn't. Of course, as a composer it is good to realise that calling on the traditional/common playing style allows the instrument(alist) to shine, to show virtuosity -- so it's probably a good idea to take that into account. Now, some pieces may call for a playing style that's completely contrary to the traditional playing style. Recently another non-traditional piece was discussed here, a piece called "Organum", which was played legato throughout: a playing style fitting for the plainchant it was imitating/inspired by [2], but obviously not played in a traditional style. I believe there's nothing wrong with writing for (any type of) pipes in an orchestral (or other non-traditional) setting, but a composer must realise the abilities and limitations of the instrument if he/she wants to make it work -- though understanding an instrument doesn't mean an ability to play on it, just an ability to get its essence. Of course, that doesn't mean I'll like the composition, but it'll at least fit the instrument. Bart [1] http://www.csl.sony.fr/downloads/papers/2005/tanaka-05b.pdf [2] After which the piece was named, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organum To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
