Why a Choral Composition Competition?

Select theme, subject, occasion for the piece and event.

Is there a specific subject or event you want to highlight? Some examples include honoring a member of your community, celebrating an anniversary of your organization, or creating an event just because you want to support and connect with new choral composers in the world.

Why are you creating this opportunity now? If your response is to support choral composers, that’s awesome! If you have more reasons, write them all down because those details will help you shape this event.

You might be honoring a poet by requiring composers to use their texts. Maybe you are celebrating composers of a specific part of the world or celebrating five years of your organization. There are so many reasons. Knowing the reason for the event will help you getting composers who are more aligned with your goals.

Here are a few examples:

• San Francisco Choral Society 2022 New Music Commission honoring a member of their community launched a thorough application with a helpful description of what they were looking for.
• Ensemble Companio’s 10th Anniversary Commission Competition with a thorough explanation about their theme“home, returning a belonging.”
• International Choral Composition Competition Japan seeks to highlight the music of composers around the world with clear details in their application, but no further reason than to celebrate new choral composers.

You can further use this opportunity to build your concert.

The advantage of having a subject is that you control what pieces you might be getting. The disadvantage of being too specific is that you might have fewer pieces submitted, especially when requesting composers to write a new work for the competition.

Here are a few examples of opportunities that helped build an entire program or belonged to a themed concert:

• Inversion Ensemble’s 2020-21 Sandra Fivecoat Memorial Emerging Composer Contest which required composers to submit an Agnus Dei to be part of their “in memoriam” concert.
• San Francisco Choral Artists’ New Voices Project which required eligible composers to submit works on themes of transportation, offering the concert titled “Boats & Trains & Flying Machines.”