One of the first Latin expressions you learn in Latin I is “caveat emptor”: buyer beware. But just as important is the flip side of the coin: non-buyer beware. Both are important to keep in mind when considering commissioning new music for your ensemble.
Buyer Beware: Not every commission is a smooth process. Sometimes composers are late, fail to deliver at all, or select a text your singers don’t respond to. Sometimes the piece is just a dud. Not every piece Mozart wrote was the Ave Verum Corpus and not every Dan Gawthrop piece is Sing Me To Heaven. Commissioners must be mindful of that and chalk up disappointments to part of the risk and educational process. (It’s true that many of the risks are minor, and contracts usually keep things in line.)
Non-Buyer Beware. You can’t win if you aren’t in the game. Without commissioning ensembles, most of your favorite choral pieces wouldn’t exist. Alice Parker, Andrea Ramsey, Caroline Shaw, Stacey Gibbs, Eric Whitacre, and virtually every other composer you love almost invariably work on commission. Their music isn’t written without someone – someone like you – putting some money on the line. As I said above, they might not write their best piece every, every time, but without commissioners, they would never write it at all.
My takeaway: get in the game, commission new music. It’s the best way to advance the art, not to mention giving a special and personal educational experience to your students. Do it with your eyes open, but do it.
Side note: this is one of the reasons I think consortiums are a great way to go. With strength in numbers, you minimize many of the buyer beware aspects of commissioning, and maximize the likelihood of being able to participate in a commission. As of this writing, I have seventeen members of the 2018 Michigan Choral Commission Consortium!