The Performance Centre,
Falmouth University,
Penryn Campus,
Penryn,
Cornwall, TR10 9LX
Portraits for a Study Project
A Unique Composing Opportunity for Cornish Music Students 11 – 18
Dear Head of Music,
I am writing to you regarding an opportunity for your students to produce their own
compositions as part of a groundbreaking music project, which could be produced either
arising from work done at school, or independently by students at home.
As part of my Portraits for a Study project, Falmouth University’s Academy of Music and
Theatre Arts and Yamaha UK, working with Music Cornwall, are offering prizes for the
winning entries in a competition to compose a 3 to 4 minute piece for piano inspired by one of
two paintings by one of the world’s leading visual artists, Gerhard Richter (see below).
The winning pieces will be performed on Falmouth University’s Yamaha Disklavier piano, at a
special performance event for winners, friends and families at the University’s Performance
Centre. The prize for the 9 winners will include both the public performance, and their pieces
being featured on a special studio recording generously funded by Yamaha UK. The
performance event will be absolutely unique: no live musician will be present; the Disklavier
will perform all of the pieces by itself, as if an invisible pianist is playing the keys and pedals.
See further details below.
Winners will also receive free tickets to the Portraits For a Study performance event in Studio
A at The Performance Centre, on the Penryn Campus, at 7.30pm on Saturday 22 of February
2014, with a groundbreaking simultaneous concert between Falmouth and various locations
in London.
Portraits for a Study Project
I am working on a large-scale project, supported by Arts Council England, the Performing
Rights Society Foundation for New Music, Yamaha UK, Falmouth University, the Royal
Academy of Music, Goldsmiths University and Superfast Cornwall, to create music inspired
by the art of one of the world’s greatest living visual artists, Gerhard Richter. As a kind of
contemporary ‘Pictures at an Exhibition,’ I will be composing pieces for 4 Yamaha Disklavier
pianos, separated by 300 miles, played by just one live pianist. The ‘master’ instrument will be
played live at Falmouth University’s Penryn campus by pianist Roderick Chadwick, and 3
‘slave’ player-less Disklaviers in London will perform exactly what is played in Cornwall,
receiving the data transferred over broadband. The music will then be re-composed for string
quartet and performed back from The Royal Academy of Music in London by the Kreutzer
Quartet to all the other venues via audio-visual link.
I am a composer based at both Falmouth University Music Department and the Royal
Academy of Music, with a long interest in creating musical responses to visual artworks or
using aspects of artworks to generate music. I hope that your students may discover some
new ways of thinking about composing by using artworks as an inspiration and that they
might find it useful to see a composer active in this area. I usually work in quite a detailed way
to make music that responds to structures, procedures and expressive qualities in the
artworks, but I also try not to fall into the trap of being too literal: my idea is to try to achieve a
‘conversation’ between art forms, not a crude illustration. There are many examples of
composers engaging with visual elements in the repertoire, from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition, to Messiaen’s investigations of colour, to Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, and many
others. There are some details of how I began the process of creating my own responses to
paintings by Mark Rothko for Tate, in the film here: www.tate.org.uk/contextcomment/video/jim-aitchison. There are more details regarding my approaches in general on
my website at www.jimaitchison.com.
Yamaha’s Disklavier
Yamaha’s Disklavier is a wholly unique high-tech update of the Pianola or Player Piano. It is a
conventional concert grand piano, but with a mechanism and an inbuilt computer, enabling it
to play by itself, to be linked to an external computer, or to be networked with other
Disklaviers hundreds or even thousands of miles away, or to be played as a normal piano, or
a combination of all of these things. I am making use of these singular networking possibilities
for my music after Gerhard Richter. Recently, Elton John played the Disklavier at Falmouth
University and several other Disklaviers around the world from Los Angeles, USA.
I do hope that we might see some of your students’ work in due course.
Please see details, advice and requirements below.
Thank you and sincerely,
Jim Aitchison
Disklavier-Piano Composing Competition for Schools – Details

Students are invited to compose and submit one 3 to 4 minute piece for solo piano, along
with a 250 + word program note describing how they have responded to the painting
chosen, how their pieces were composed and how the painting influenced the way that
they worked. They can research more information about Gerhard Richter on his website:
www.gerhard-richter.com. The pieces will be judged by a panel comprised of composer
Jim Aitchison, pianist Roderick Chadwick from the Royal Academy of Music, and David
Halford, Business Development Manager at Yamaha Music Europe Gmbh (UK).

Entry will be split into 3 age groups according to Key Stage: years 7, 8 and 9; years 10
and 11; and years 12 and 13, with 3 winners in each group.

All prize winners will have their pieces performed at a special event on Falmouth
University’s Yamaha Disklavier, their pieces recorded onto a properly produced CD,
courtesy of Yamaha, and they will also be presented with a Yamaha Disklavier branded
USB with their own work both as an audio file and midi file.

The pieces should be inspired by one of the two paintings by Gerhard Richter below
(follow the links):
Seascape (Sea-Sea)
www.gerhard-richter.com/art/paintings/photo_paintings/detail.php?4870
4096 Colours
www.gerhard-richter.com/art/search/detail.php?6089
(Important: please be aware that while they can be viewed online, you cannot
reproduce these images in any form without permission from the copyright holder.)

The pieces should either be scored conventionally in notation using a score-writing
program like Sibelius or Finale. Or not scored, but composed on sound-processing
programs such as Logic, Cubase or Abelton etc. Unfortunately, hand written pieces
cannot be considered, because the Disklavier will perform the pieces from MIDI files.

When composing for Disklavier, it is most straightforward to think of the instrument simply
as a piano. However, pieces are welcome that would not be playable by a live performer
as the Disklavier can play far beyond human capabilities. Or, students can decide to write
music that a live pianist could play (which is the approach that I am taking in my own
pieces). Whatever the approach, we will be looking for the most effective design and use
of musical elements, sensitivity to the sounds and resources of the piano, an authentic
sense of connection between the paintings and the resulting music, as well as evidence of
creativity, control and expressive impact. Students might like to look at examples of piano
music from the C19th (especially Pictures at an Exhibition in this context) right up to
modern pieces by Cage, Reich, Ligeti and Nancarrow – the latter composer wrote for
Player Piano, the mechanical antecedent of the Disklavier.

For those using Sibelius or Finale, all dynamics and other indications for expression and
articulations, pedalling and tempi (expressed as metronome markings) should be written
in the notated scores (and therefore picked up by playback and manifested in the MIDI
files). The more tempo, expression and articulation markings etc. put into pieces, the
more expressive the performance will be, as the Disklavier will reproduce these markings.

For winning submissions created in Logic and Cubase etc., we may possibly have to tidy
up the MIDI files somewhat before plugging them into the Disklavier, as these programs
tend to transfer a lot of peripheral data into MIDI.

We would be very grateful if students would make sure not to write triple forte in scored
pieces, or excessively loud volume levels in non-notated pieces produced on Logic and
Cubase etc., as this could damage the instrument!

Once pieces are created on your school’s, or the student’s, usual software, they should be
saved as MIDI files (for scored pieces, it is safer to limit the notation to 2 staves only
before converting). Students ought to listen through and check that the MIDI file
represents the sound of the music they envisaged before they submit it.

To submit, if you could compile all the MIDI files of your students’ pieces along with their
250 word programme notes in Word format, with each student’s name and year group
clearly labeled and the title of their piece, and if you could kindly ensure that each student
has put their name, year group and school in the filename of each MIDI file (e.g.
johnelton11mullion.mid). If the music is scored, students might also like to submit a PDF
of the score as well. It might be easiest to submit entries via an online file transfer platform
such as www.wetransfer.com or www.Dropbox.com via our contact email,
DisklavierCompetition@falmouth.ac.uk, and/or by post on disc or USB stick, marked
‘Disklavier Composition Competition Entry,’ to: Dr Antti Saario, Head of Music, The
Performance Centre, Falmouth University, Penryn Campus, Treliever Road, Penryn,
Cornwall TR10 9LX. Please use the contacts below if there are any problems.

The deadline for submission is midnight on Sunday 1 December 2013.

The winners’ performance event will be held at Falmouth University, in Studio A at The
Performance Centre, on the Penryn Campus, at 7.30pm on Saturday 11 of January 2014.
Students are welcome to bring family and friends along. Directions, parking and access
details to follow.

Contacts
DisklavierCompetition@falmouth.ac.uk
The Performance Centre,
Falmouth University,
Penryn Campus,
Penryn, TR10 9LX
Telephone: 01326 255 885
Music Cornwall
www.musiccornwall.org/contact
Oceans House,
Truro Business Park,
Threemilestone,
Truro, TR4 9LD
Telephone: 01872 323 002