Title: Zeke Hecker: On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
Headings: On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
On Composing for Woodwind Quintet
by Zeke Hecker

Content: It'll sound better, and you won't bore the players. Avoid purely triadic thinking. You've got as many as five notes to sound simultaneously, which means the richness of "color" chords: 6ths, 9ths, 11ths, and beyond. ( If the technical language is opaque to you, as it mostly is to me, all I mean is that you can add interesting notes to the common chord for expressive purpose.) But don't use all five instruments all the time. Make permutations and combinations: create a kaleidoscopic effect, instead of a monotonous one. The great virtue of the woodwind quintet is color, so mix your palette. ( To give some idea of the range of options, David Van Vactor's Music for Woodwinds consists of pieces using every possible combination of the quintet instruments from one to five, ending with double quintet.