The Dynamics of Decision-Making: Mark It or Leave It?

One of my most formative lessons as a budding orchestrator had nothing to do with voicings, colors, interlocking lines, instrument combinations, or any of the fancy things that books—rightfully—cover and that most of the conversation revolves around. It came when I first had someone else doing the copying. Suddenly, I was getting a boatload of questions:

“Is this still two flutes?”
“You’ve written three notes for two bassoons—so which one walks the plank?”
“Do they come in forte or just casually stroll in?”

It dawned on me that all the time I’d been doing my own copying, I’d been sloppy in my score, relying on the fact that I’d be doing the part extraction myself and could stumble over these issues as I went. But with a fresh pair of eyes, my sins were laid bare. I realized that being mindful in how I wrote would not only save me from a question-loaded boat, it would also result in a score that was clearer for conductors.

With that preamble, I’d like to talk a little bit about dynamics. If you’re new to this, it might be worth going over your own scores with these ideas in mind. If you’re not new, I know there are differing schools of thought and that debates on this topic can get fortissimo. The views presented here are simply my way of thinking about it.

Dynamic Entrances

If we consider the following opening eight bars of a very popular piece, we can pat ourselves on the back for remembering to indicate the tempo.

We may also feel a bit smug about remembering to put in a starting dynamic. However, we did not put in a dynamic for the celli in bar 5. Given the context, the cellists can certainly assume they should blend in, but the music around them could change drastically. Suppose, for instance, there was a sudden ff chord in the rest of the orchestra on the last quarter of bar 4. With this in mind, I started making sure to label every entry an instrument makes.

The most obvious one, of course, is when an instrument plays for the first time. In this case, I would need to mark the pp for the celli in bar 5.

In a broader sense, an entry is simply when an instrument plays after having rested. Say we give the celli something like this:

Now they have a starting dynamic and know exactly how to blend in. In today’s world of limited rehearsals and even fewer takes in a recording session, I wouldn’t blame any player for losing track of how the music unfolds. And since everything could still change in bar 4, we would still need to label bar 5.

In fact, the system I—and most of the people I work with—use is to label a new dynamic whenever an instrument has rested for a full bar.

This means not counting beats of rest to add up to a bar but rather marking a dynamic whenever an instrument sees a full-bar rest in its part. So, when you go over parts and spot a bar rest or a multi-rest, that’s your cue to add a dynamic for clarity.

One exception to this could be when an instrument has a consistent pattern of bar rests. In that case, adding a dynamic marking for every re-entry would be redundant and clutter the score unnecessarily.

Dynamic Exits

Next, let’s consider the importance of always providing an ending dynamic for your hairpins. If you’ve been diligent in marking all entrances, then hairpins will always have a clear starting point. In the example above, the pp carries over to the start of bar 6. But what’s unclear is: to what dynamic should they swell?

Going over your score with this in mind can help untangle some of the dynamic mishaps I’ve encountered myself. Once I started looking at the complete scope of a piece through dynamic progression, things became a lot clearer. For instance, this marking explicitly indicates that I want the two bars to swell to the next dynamic level:

If I want to indicate a swell within the same dynamic, I use a poco hairpin:

To me, this is the orchestral equivalent of those extra half-gears truck drivers use. Some will argue that an ending dynamic is necessary here, but in my mind, the two examples above are mutually exclusive in a single swell—since ending on p would no longer be poco.

To quote a famous conductor I once discussed this with:

“Sometimes orchestras will go to the next dynamic, but ‘poco’ means ‘a little.’ Whenever it doesn’t, then it means ‘A LOT!’” – famous conductor.

Indeed, I’ve heard orchestras play poco hairpins that end up spanning two full dynamics. I don’t know exactly where this tradition comes from, but I suspect that national composer-conductors have influenced their orchestras in this way. Different orchestras and conductors have their own approaches, but if I stick to my guidelines and remain consistent, it should be clear enough for the conductor to interpret.

The opposite of poco is molto, which means “a lot.” This is almost redundant, since in that case, we could just write an ending dynamic, like mf. I tend to use molto only for dramatic effect—like a swell from pp to ff within a single bar, such as a cymbal or timpani roll.

Diminishing Returns

This isn’t exactly a sky-rocketing revelation, but if you haven’t considered it before, it might hit you—as it did me—as a surprisingly effective way to clarify your orchestration. If you’re not writing anything at the moment, take a look at your most recent piece and see if anything in this area could be made clearer.

The key takeaway here is that clear orchestration makes for happy musicians. A well-marked score reduces uncertainty, minimizes mistakes, and makes the music-making process smoother for everyone involved. And if nothing else, it might just save you from a question-loaded boat the next time someone else copies your score.