A cellist plays the cello’s lowest note, and a microphone whisks the sound to a computer, which shifts it down several octaves, making it sound like a groaning organ. A flutist trills out a short flurry of notes, and the same setup stretches and inverts the trill until it sounds like a flock of cybernetic geese. The setup in question is the augmented orchestra, a computer program that digitally manipulates the sounds of an orchestra as the musicians play in real time, seamlessly integrating electronic devices with live, analog performance. Unlike electro-acoustic pieces that tie an orchestra to a rigid click track to stay in synch with a pre-recorded tape, the augmented orchestra program is fluid enough to follow human players’ organic shifts in expression; an orchestra can play an augmented score just like they would any other, and the computer automatically adjusts its sonic contributions to match.
The augmented orchestra is the collaborative creation of married duo Anna Clyne, composer, and Jody Elff, audio engineer. As developed by Clyne and Elff, AO creates a sonic experience perceived as a natural extension of the orchestra and a fundamental component of the composition. The augmented orchestra isn’t AI, a musician-free, computer-generated mash-up of pre-existing sounds into Franken-music; rather, Clyne composes music that incorporates and builds on the sounds and talents of orchestral musicians to discover new imaginative possibilities. Clyne and Elff debuted AO with Wild Geese at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 2023, and at the BBC Proms in 2024 with The Gorgeous Nothings, which produced “a subtly atmospheric effect” that “heightened the fragile beauty of the music” (Bachtrack).
On February 14 and 15, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will give the world premiere of PALETTE, Clyne’s concerto for augmented orchestra. Music Director Stéphane Denève will lead the work; the St. Louis Symphony is the lead commissioner, and co-commissioning institutions include the National Orchestra Institute, BBC Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, New World Symphony, and the Juilliard School. PALETTE is the third—and most ambitious—of Clyne’s compositions to utilize AO. PALETTE explores the intersection of color, light, and music, reflecting Clyne’s interest in the dialogue between music and other forms of media and art. Clyne crafted each of the piece’s movements with the moods and emotions in seven of her own paintings. Lighting design by Luke Kritzeck, former director of lighting and resident designer for the New World Symphony in Miami, will add another layer.
Composer Anna Clyne and audio engineer Jody Elff have worked collaboratively to create scores deploying augmented-orchestra techniques. Photo by Victoria Stevens.
Clyne is one of today’s most-performed living composers, having been commissioned and presented by institutions including the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonie de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet, and the Sydney Opera House. Currently the composer in residence for the BBC Philharmonic, she has also held residencies in Helsinki and at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among others, and recordings of her works have been nominated for Grammys. For his part, Elff has worked with institutions including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Lincoln Center Festival, and is a long-time collaborator with the Silk Road Ensemble. He has audio-engineered book tours for Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, and has created fine art sound installations around the world. Since the start of Denève’s tenure as music director in 2019, Clyne has been one of the St. Louis Symphony’s most-performed contemporary composers; the orchestra will give its first performances of Clyne’s Masquerade with conductor Stephanie Childress on December 31.
I recently caught up with Clyne and Elff to discuss the origins and future of their invention.
What is the augmented orchestra? How did it come to be?
Anna Clyne: It all started back in 2017 over a bottle of wine.
Jody Elff: The conversation was just meandering about the different kinds of work that we do. And we were talking about orchestras in this day and age and what the future of the orchestra looks like. Until recently, bringing electronics into an orchestra meant playing to a click track, which is very rigid and not much fun for players and conductors. The conversation turned into speculation about ways to liberate orchestras from those restrictions.
Clyne: I wrote a lot of electro-acoustic pieces in my twenties, but when I began a residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I set the electronics aside to focus on writing for the orchestra. I’ve always been interested in re-integrating technology, though, so this is a very exciting opportunity to bring electronics back in a very organic way.
A rehearsal for Clyne and Elff’s Wild Geese, their first score featuring the augmented orchestra, at the 2023 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Photo by RR Jones.
How does this work in a piece of music in practical terms?
Clyne: In our first piece, Wild Geese, we had eight microphones placed throughout the orchestra, and then we applied different processes to different instruments that those mics were picking up.
Elff: None of this requires the players or conductor to do anything differently than they would if they were playing, say, a Beethoven symphony. They can just conduct and play like any other piece.
“I want to emphasize that the augmentation isn’t looping or sampling or amplification; it’s an organic transformation and extension of the orchestral soundworld,” says composer Anna Clyne. Photo by Victoria Stevens.
Clyne: I want to emphasize that the augmentation isn’t looping or sampling or amplification; it’s an organic transformation and extension of the orchestral soundworld. For example, in our second piece, there’s a vibraphone gesture that’s pitch shifted down two octaves, and that becomes a structural element in the piece.
Elff: We all know what a vibraphone sounds like, but that shift gives it a gravitas that a vibraphone alone would never have. And there’s no instrument in the world that will let you articulate like a vibraphone in that register.
During a preparatory workshop for PALETTE at the Juilliard School in New York City, Anna Clyne speaks with Julliard musicians about the work.
How do you write a piece like that?
Clyne: For Wild Geese, I wrote an initial version of it a skeletal outline and then sent the MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface] to Jody. And he offered ideas of where the sound could be extended. So there’s this big organ-like moment, and he suggested we could lower the basses to build it out.
Elff: Having the MIDI to start with is also helpful, because this all has to be programmed bespoke for each new piece. The more we can get done in advance, the less rehearsal time we have to spend on it. We learned doing Wild Geese how desperately important it is to have workshops beforehand to iron out the kinks. We’re much further along now, but every time, I feel like we’re learning so much.
As you’re learning more, how much is still in flux? Could any orchestra buy the piece and get a computer download and do it themselves?
Elff: That’s definitely our aspiration! We’re just not quite there yet. Currently, all the computer processing is triggered by playing specific notes on a MIDI keyboard, so in theory anyone who can follow a score should be able to activate the electronics, but right now that person has to be me. The actual execution of it isn’t difficult, it’s just getting the setup fixed that’s tricky right now.
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Anna Clyne in the studio with Lava, one of the paintings she created for PALETTE. Photo by Linda Källérus. -
The score for PALETTE includes a program note showing Clyne’s paintings that match each of the work’s musical movements.
And is your vision also that this is something that anyone can write for?
Clyne: That’s a great question. What we’re doing now is so baked into my voice and our collaboration. The hope is that other people will have access to this, but I’m not entirely sure how that would work.
Elff: I think of it sort of like the piano: The orchestra existed before the piano, but once the piano comes around, people start integrating it into the orchestral sound world. Right now, the amount of programming for each augmented orchestra piece is really tremendous; it’s not easy to do. But I certainly wouldn’t want to claim exclusive use of it; I’m sure other people would be able to do fabulously creative things with it, and I’d love to hear these processes applied to other composers’ music.
“I think of it sort of like the piano,” says Jody Elff. “The orchestra existed before the piano, but once the piano comes around, people start integrating it into the orchestral sound world.”
What about longevity? How are you future-proofing these pieces for the next generation? Or is that not a concern?
Clyne: It’s actually something we’re thinking about a lot. It’s something we went through recently with my violin concerto, which is ten years old at this point and needed some updating. Whenever you make art, I think you always hope that it will live beyond you.
Elff: We’re able to move more and more into a pure software format instead of hardwired devices, which is a huge advantage for longevity. It seems not impossible that in a few years we’ll get this to the point that everything is easily updatable. But also, listen: If this doesn’t survive the next two hundred years, I’m sure there will be other good things out there. And I won’t be worried about it by then!
Clyne: You gotta take risks. We’re doing something new with the augmented orchestra. Even if it becomes obsolete, it could still be a stepping stone. It could still open up the public to the welcoming possibilities of these new sounds.
