Writing Your Programme Note

About 150 words, four jobs

Alongside your recording you submit a programme note of about 150 words. It is short enough to write in an evening, and short enough that a wasted sentence is expensive. It has four jobs, and they are named for you. That is roughly thirty-seven words each. Spend your budget on something the note was not asked for and one of the four simply will not be there.

The four jobs

Everything the note is asked to do. Nothing here is about how the piece felt to write.

Which job is each doing?

The sentence that feels right

A student opens their note with three sentences about how much they enjoyed writing the piece and how hard they worked on it. What is wrong with that?

• Nothing, because it shows engagement with the task
• It spends words from a small budget on none of the four things the note has to cover
• Personal opinions are not allowed in a programme note
• It should come at the end rather than the beginning

Two ways to spend 150 words

The same composition, described twice. One of these leaves two of the four jobs undone.

Words left

A student has used 96 words covering their intent and the occasion. Working to about 150 words in total, roughly how many are left for the elements and the equipment?

What has to be in there?

Which two of these must the note cover?

• The musical elements the piece demonstrates
• The software or hardware you used
• How long the composition took you
• A bar by bar description of the music
• Which set work influenced you

Naming elements, not counting them

The elements job asks you to name the musical elements your piece demonstrates, in the note, in your own words. How many you need, and which groups they have to come from, is a separate requirement with its own rules, and it is checked against the music rather than against the note. What the note does is make your elements easy to find: a reader should not have to guess which ones you think you demonstrated. Name them plainly and move on.

A sensible drafting order

Put these four drafting steps into an order that protects your word budget.

• Write one plain sentence for each of the four jobs
• Check that all four jobs are actually covered
• Add detail to whichever job is thinnest
• Cut anything that is doing none of the four jobs

A note that does all four

This piece was written to be played before a school concert begins, while an audience is still arriving and settling. That shaped it: it had to work when nobody is listening closely and still reward anyone who is. I built it on a repeating four bar structure so a listener joining halfway is not lost, and used a melody that returns in three different textures rather than developing far from itself. The harmony stays in one key throughout, and the dynamics rise slowly so that the piece lifts rather than interrupts. I wrote and recorded it in a digital audio workstation, playing the keyboard part live on a MIDI keyboard and adding a software string sound underneath. The quiet opening is deliberate and the closing bars are the loudest thing in it.

Which two name equipment or occasion?

Here are six phrases from the note you just read. Tap the two that do the occasion job and the equipment job.

• Played before a school concert begins, while an audience is arriving
• A repeating four bar structure
• A melody that returns in three different textures
• Recorded in a digital audio workstation with a MIDI keyboard
• The harmony stays in one key throughout
• The dynamics rise slowly

The requirements

The programme note runs to about _____ words and covers four things: your compositional _____, the audience or _____, the musical _____ the piece demonstrates, and the software or _____ you used.

Write the intent sentence

Intent says what you wanted the music to do. Choose the option in each gap.

Keep, cut, or rewrite?

Your draft is over length. For each sentence, decide what to do with it.

A note to fix

Somebody shows you their programme note and asks whether it is ready. Work through it.

• The note covers intent, elements and equipment beautifully, and never says who the piece is for.
• They add a sentence saying the piece is for anyone who enjoys listening to music.
• The note is now well over length, and the longest paragraph describes how the idea first came to them.

Draft the note

Think of a piece you could write, or one you have written. Draft a programme note for it. You do not have to reach 150 words here, but every sentence should be doing one of the four jobs.

• Say what you wanted the music to do
• Name a specific audience or occasion, not anyone who likes music
• Name the musical elements a listener could point at
• Say what you wrote and recorded it with, without naming a brand