Writing for Strings by Tom Coult

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

This reflects my interest in baroque playing (I played in a baroque ensemble for several years on a period instrument)
where use of vibrato is minimal. I constantly marvel at what a bow can do simply on open strings – changing from earthy
heft to quicksilver agility in the blink of an eye (or the flick of a wrist).
Indeed I have a bit of an obsession with open strings – one of the most fascinating pieces of string music I know is Louis
Andriessen’s Symphony for Open Strings – 12 solo string players each have a different tuning and never put a finger down
on the fingerboard. Each player, then, contributes their own four notes to a total collection of 48 unique pitches. It’s
an extraordinary sound, and has informed my use of tuned-down instruments in several pieces, giving myself a wider
repertoire of open strings and natural harmonics with which to play. In my String Quartet, the second violin and viola are
tuned down a semitone and tone respectively, meaning that the quartet as a whole has 16 unique open strings with 11
pitches (a normal quartet has only nine unique strings with five pitches).
It was chasing open strings that led me to a novel technique used in the fourth of my violin Études. By pressing down
the middle of three strings anywhere reasonably high up the fingerboard and bowing sul tasto, a string player can play
comfortably on two open strings that aren’t next to one another (the middle one being taken out of commission). Given
my love for open strings, this was a delightful find in itself, but by carefully positioning the bow at the right position in
relationship to where the middle string is stopped, the violinist can sustain, at a low volume, both the two open strings
and the stopped string in the middle. I found an impish delight in filling this short study with sustained three-note chords
(theoretically impossible and visually disarming), and the fragility that this technique prompts in the sound certainly
informs its Zen-like meditative atmosphere.
My next project will be a violin concerto for the wonderful Daniel Pioro, whose playing is exquisitely characterful and
characterfully exquisite. I can’t wait to get started – it may have some open strings in it…
Tom Coult
Tom Coult is a composer born in London in 1988. His work has been
championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles,
resulting in a series of large-scale pieces including Beautiful Caged Thing
for soprano Claire Booth and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Sonnet
Machine for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and Spirit of the Staircase
for the London Sinfonietta. In 2017 his St John’s Dance opened the First
Night of the BBC Proms, performed by Edward Gardner and the BBC
Symphony Orchestra. On 29 May the Arditti Quartet will premiere his
String Quartet at the Purcell Room at London’s Southbank Centre.
For more information about Tom Coult and his compositions, head to:
fabermusic.com
©Maurice Foxall
More from our contemporary composers
We are proud to represent a selection of the world’s finest contemporary classical composers
including Thomas Adès, George Benjamin and Oliver Knussen. Find out more about their
works for strings on page 16 of this catalogue.
Faber Music strings Catalogue
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