Backstage with our Orchestra Librarian

My role as Orchestra Librarian is to ensure the music for all our projects and performances is received and prepared in a timely manner and at the highest international standard. This involves sourcing music from all over the world, managing and advising on copyright and licensing requirements, and liaising with conductors, soloists and orchestra musicians to deliver our services in the best way possible. I manage a team of two Orchestra Library Assistants, and work closely with the Performance Services, Artistic Planning and Marketing teams to plan and deliver music resources for our projects.

The process really begins the previous year before we launch the upcoming season. I research all the music requirements for the programs in the coming year to make sure it’s available, and then I gather quotes for music hire fees and freight. The music we perform comes from our existing collection, the National Music Library at Symphony Services International in Sydney, publisher agents in Australia, and publishers from all over the world. Some music is available for purchase to add to our collection, while others are hire only and must be freighted in, prepared, performed and returned to the publisher. Copyright music is heavily controlled to ensure composers receive royalties from their pieces so they can keep creating great music for us to perform for our audiences. In some cases there may only be half a dozen sets of a piece in the whole world so it’s important to get in early to ensure access and avoid urgent freight fees. 

Once I have ordered the music for the coming season, it arrives to us eight weeks in advance of the rehearsals for each concert. The Librarians then get to work checking and cleaning up the parts. Our aim is to supply music to the musicians four weeks in advance of the rehearsals so that they can practice and prepare. We aim to get the sheet music and score to a state where the orchestra and conductor can rehearse smoothly without any disruptions due to illegible parts, bad page turns, wrong notes, incorrect bar numbers, or other inconsistencies that make the rehearsal process harder for them. The first thing you learn as an orchestra librarian is that the music does not arrive in perfect condition for the Orchestra’s use!

I studied a Bachelor of Music with Honours in Performance and Musicology at UQ. There are currently no degree courses available in Australia (and I think only one in development worldwide) to study orchestra librarianship specifically. The most common route orchestra librarians take is to have studied a music degree, and found (like I did) that they ‘fell sideways’ into orchestra librarianship almost by accident without having previously been aware that such a role existed professionally as a career! My first role as a music librarian was preparing music for the Concert Band and Orchestra during my undergraduate studies. By a lucky confluence of skills, work ethic and hugely supportive mentors I began my role working as Library Assistant at Queensland Symphony Orchestra while I was completing my studies, expecting to become a full time orchestral player. I took a great interest in orchestra management and orchestra librarianship, and found it matched my skills and interests perfectly. I completed the Arts Administration course at Australian Youth Orchestra National Music Camp, and spent a summer at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts USA working with the Boston Symphony Orchestra Librarians as an Orchestra Library Fellow.

The notated music is a language in itself, and within that there are a number of elements that I need to be able to understand. For example, the violas play most of their music in alto clef, the cellos in bass clef and sometimes tenor clef, and the violins in treble clef. The clefs are just a way of making the music in certain ranges easier to read for the players whose instruments fit into those ranges. In addition to clefs, there are transposing instruments (for example horns in F, Clarinets in B flat etc) so I have to be fluent in reading the full score (all the parts on one page) and making the transpositions and clef adjustments in my head. In terms of actual language it is helpful to know all sorts of musical terms and instrument names in a variety of languages including Italian, French, German, English, and Russian.

Orchestras and Orchestra Librarians still very much operate with paper and pencil. We perform from old and new music - even music only composed in recent years is still published as printed and bound parts. We do use digital tools such as Adobe, file transfer sites and digital music engraving programs to assist us in distribution and making adjustments. A digital world of orchestral sheet music is slowly growing with technology and other advances alongside the customary paper parts. 

Yes, I play flute and piccolo. Recently I don’t play as much anymore but enjoy being engaged with music and orchestra life in my role at Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Requests are usually notable to me not for being strange, but for the effort and time they took to track down. An example would be a work in the program for Vienna and Beyond this year – Dorfkinder Waltz (Villiage Children’s Waltz) – based on themes from the operetta Der Zigeunerprimas (The Gypsy Virtuoso). It is available only from a small publisher in Vienna and comes in a number of versions ranging from piano reductions with violin solo, to ‘salon orchestra’ (for which the actual instruments were not described in the catalogue), and chamber ensemble with additional optional parts to increase the size to a full orchestra. After many emails and months of waiting we finally were able to purchase the set and the correct music arrived just the other week. As with many old Viennese waltz parts, they are printed on paper only slightly larger than an A5, which presents another challenge for our musicians to adjust to reading it, compared to other larger format sheet music. 

I like to listen to ABC Classic on the radio while I am working. I can’t go past J.S. Bach as an all-time favourite, and also Percy Grainger. I also really enjoy wind chamber music.

Spending time at home with my rescue cat Meredith, exploring yoga, baking and cooking, spending time with friends, and developing my skills as an advocate and lived experience voice in the Mental Health community. 

We have had a number of cancelled concerts and projects due to the virus. With the tightening restrictions on international travel, we have requested early receipt of music for as many forward concerts as possible so that we can keep working and preparing music for the planned upcoming concerts, (and the musicians can practice while social distancing at home) so our library benches are stacked unusually high with music! I am also making plans for how we can work from home if required including couriering boxes of music to our homes. There are many creative ideas coming through to keep the music going during this time and the library will continue to stand ready to service the music requirements on a tight timeframe so we can continue to share our music making with our communities.