Strings Catalogue

Writing for Strings
by Tom Coult
When I tell people I’m a composer, one of the most common questions I get asked is ‘how do you write for all those
instruments if you don’t play them?’ Certainly part of a composer’s job is to know how all the instruments of the
orchestra are played – to know the practicalities, the ranges, how sound is produced and how you can get the best
out of them.
But, having grown up as a violinist (albeit now a lapsed one), I will always feel a special frisson of excitement when
putting down notes for string instruments.
Music for strings has played a prominent part in my output thus far – in my Études for solo violin, in Limp for violin
and piano, and in Sparking and Slipping which features a violin soloist and a small ensemble. I have written for string
orchestra (My Curves are not Mad) and written a String Quartet, and two of my orchestral pieces open with the
sound of solo string instruments.
More so than any other instrument, there is a physicality to string playing – arms and body move, hair touches
string and string visibly shakes, weight shifts between feet, wrists writhe and contort, bows soar towards the sky
one moment and crash down like hammers the next. Seeing a committed string orchestra play standing up is to
watch a many-headed insectoid creature, its many tendrils flailing this way and that.
It is this physicality that I often enjoy trying to capture when writing for strings, and knowing what it feels like to
play the violin helps me immeasurably. I do not often compose using my violin, though a fly on my wall would
often see me wielding an imaginary one as I work through a bit of articulation or bowing.
My taste in string playing has certainly offered directions for my own string writing. In particular, I’m most entranced by
playing where the focus of expression and musicality is shifted towards the right arm rather than the left – i.e. that it is
primarily the bow arm giving character, beauty, sensuality and shape, rather than all that being the job of a frantically
vibrating left hand.
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Faber Music strings Catalogue