Composing for Clarinet

Call for Composers

During the Darmstadt Summer Course 2025 Heather Roche (clarinet tutor) and Hans Thomalla (composition tutor) will offer a workshop for clarinetists and composers. Composers selected for this project will work together with the Summer Course clarinetists on a new short clarinet solo piece.

All participants and tutors will meet as a group on Zoom in late April / early May to share some existing solo repertoire, and to discuss collaborative strategies. Composers selected for the workshop will then be paired with clarinetists for whom they will write a new piece.

A flexible first draft of all solo pieces should be submitted as a PDF to the paired clarinetist and the tutors by 15 June 2025, so that the clarinetist can familiarize themselves with the new works. (For practical reasons the pieces should not be longer than 5-7 minutes maximum and they cannot involve electronics.)

Clarinet Studio participants will work on the selected pieces in Darmstadt together with the composers as well as in the Clarinet Studio of Heather Roche. Further collaborative development of the pieces, adjustments to techniques, notation, and form are encouraged. Each clarinetist/composer team is expected to present the work, and the clarinetist’s approach to it during one or two group sessions that are mandatory for all participants to attend. There, we will as a group discuss the materials of the new pieces, their notation, questions or challenges for a performer, as well as general questions regarding composition and interpretation.

The pieces will be shared with the public in a final presentation.

Clarinet solo composition:

• Max 7 minutes duration
• No Electronics
• Due as finished draft: 15 June 2025

Application

To apply for this workshop, please submit ONE PDF file (LASTNAME_Firstname_ClarinetComposition2025.pdf) containing the following:

• Score of an existing piece (ideally involving a wind instrument but not required; please use link to cloud for large score files) and a link to a recording (on Bandcamp, google drive, dropbox etc.)
• Optional: A few sentences about the piece you want to write for the workshop (not required)

and e-mail it by 10 February 2025 to:

clarinet-composition@darmstaedter-ferienkurse.de

Please note that we cannot consider any remarks, links, or information outside the PDF!

Applicants will be notified in March 2025.

Important: Please take note of our data protection policy and the conditions for participation for the Darmstadt Summer Course before submitting your application.