“At the end of the day, for me, composition is just about connection. I want to tell stories and build worlds. That’s what excites me — it’s what excites people as human beings.”
Emily Pedersen
Emily Pedersen is a composer currently based in Manchester. Emily’s work focuses around narrative, emotional, and sensory experiences with structure and harmony often being her musical priorities. Described as a “new extraordinary talent” (Karen Marshall, Faber Music) and “on many a ones-to-watch list” (Johnny James, Creative Tourist), Emily has written for musicians including the BBC Singers, Hallé Orchestra, Piatti Quartet, and Juliet Fraser, with accolades including the ORA Singers Young Composers Competition, the National Centre of Early Music Young Composers Award (finalist) and the Clements’ Prize (Audience Prize); recently, Emily’s chamber opera Screenshot sold out at Stoller Hall at its premiere in April 2024. Emily studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, and at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse 2023; she is currently a composition mentor for the EMPOWER OpusHER composition prize, and a substitute composition tutor at Junior RNCM.
Emily has recently been commissioned by the ORA Singers, who are premiering her new work at Stoller Hall on 29th April 2025. Ahead of the premiere, Patrick Ellis caught up with Emily to discuss storytelling, subtext, perspectives from Darmstadt, tackling abuse through opera, and approaching composition through empathy…
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Patrick/PRXLUDES: Hi Emily, thanks for making the time for this interview. I wanted to start off by asking how you got into composition — would I be correct in thinking that you started by playing an instrument and then made your way towards writing music afterwards?
Emily Pedersen: I played the trumpet in secondary school. I think one of the big things about playing an instrument was making music with other people. I don’t play anymore, but a lot of my musical beginnings were wrapped up in that. Another thing that fed into that, in hindsight, was that I grew up in South-East Asia; the musical scene [there] wasn’t quite as clear cut as I understand it to be in the UK. There wasn’t really a space for brass in the circles I was in then.
I went to state school in North Yorkshire, where I was really lucky as they had an amazing department. I guess I was always quite creative. I struggled with setting out someone else’s vision all of the time, I was wanting to make new things instead. I am somebody who really likes being able to put everything into something, and when you are performing live music there is a lot left up to chance, no matter how hard you work — at least for me.
I really liked telling stories as a kid. I went through a phase of wanting to be an artist or a writer. I think with composing, what is still valuable to me is that narrative, that sense of storytelling. After a while, I started to look at competitions, because it seemed to be a way to take things a step further. I didn’t have loads of friends who were high level instrumentalists, so it was quite hard to get things played.
Were there any composition programmes that you were involved in which helped establish yourself as a young composer?
When I was 16, I went to the county youth orchestra for the first time. Every year they had a composer competition, [so] I wrote this orchestral piece for them — which was then chosen to be played in their concert and it was the most amazing thing.
Later on, I was a finalist for the ORA Singers Young Composers Competition. It was the debut year and was really the thing to make it all possible — I was just so lucky to be able to get involved in that. I was mentored through it by Richard Allain; it was the first time that I had lessons in any capacity, and it was just incredible. As a young person, to hear a professional ensemble realise everything you wish to write and to not have any limitations was amazing. It felt like for the first time, I could step outside of everything else — it was the first piece that I wrote without a key signature.
I remember writing this big work [with] loads of divisi — I was really excited — and ending with a plagal cadence… Richard said to me afterward “let’s have a talk about this… we don’t have to do that all of the time.” -laughs- I think that you learn so many rules and that was the first thing that took me out of that rule book. Because of that, I ended up doing Junior RNCM [Royal Northern College of Music] for a year; then the following year, I started my undergraduate at the RNCM. I’m still currently in Manchester, but I will be moving down to London for a Masters in September; I am freelancing and working as a BBC Music librarian part time — so lots of bits have come together to make that happen.
You’ve described your working process as being emotionally driven. Was that always the case earlier on or was it more theoretical?
Some of it, I just genuinely didn’t know. There were traditional rules for things and I didn’t know what they were, so I wasn’t following them. I suppose for me, all of the theoretical tools are a means to an end. I’m not somebody who gets excited about harmony for harmony’s sake — but I get excited about what it does for a piece, what it does for a narrative or a world I am building.
Was narrative and storytelling an element to practice that came early on?
Yes, it was always present. I didn’t come from a musical family; when you first get into being a musician, if you don’t come from a musical background, it can feel quite cliquey and be a bit daunting. I think having that extra frame on top of it — having that lens of a narrative, sensation or feeling to look through — contextualises the music as something that can be human and accessible to anybody, regardless of musical training.
All of the music that I was listening to was very informed by that. I’ve always been someone who’s struggled with having my concentration kept by lots of theory, or without extra elements added on. I have lots of respect for work that is abstract — I’ve written works like that more recently — but especially as a younger composer, I needed something extra-musical to latch onto and make it exciting for me.
What were some of the extra-musical subjects that you used in some of those pieces?
I remember the piece that I wrote for the North Yorkshire Youth Orchestra. I very vaguely looked at this idea of someone going to space for the first time. I titled it ‘Space to Breathe’, and it simply followed the storyline of someone being really excited to do something, getting a bit nervous, then going through with it — and then getting to the end and being like “this is quite great”. I did know other people in that orchestra, and that was really exciting to me. My best friend was the principal oboist, so it was lovely that I could write her something fun to play which wasn’t really part of the “storytelling” — but it was part of the storytelling for me. She got the most beautiful bit in the piece. -laughs-
The more I think about it, it did start to change with the ORA piece. Subtext has gotten more and more important to me. It’s one of the things that excites me about composition — the amount of layers that you can get. Recently, I set Panis angelicus, which [was] a reflection on the composer João Loureço Rebelo; it was a Renaissance setting of the text, not the more famous one. My mum was a newspaper editor, and she [told me] “you can’t set a text if you don’t know what it means” — it’s not just what the words mean, it’s also about the context and researching that. I think that curiosity comes with being a composer, being able to learn about these things; to go really deep into something, read about it, and then take what you can from it.
Does using subtext also inform your compositional process?
There’s an author named Sophie Mackintosh; she had written on her Substack that every novel she writes has tens and tens of “ghost novels” — things that she has written and then gotten rid of. And each one of those builds that work up, there is something present about [them] in the final work. I really felt like I feel like there is all of this ghost-knowledge, all of these sorts of ghost-pieces that in turn inform the final piece. It’s like reverberation — it’s on the edges of the piece if you choose to look for it.
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One of your most notable works is your opera Screenshot, which sold out its premiere at the Stoller Hall last April. I understand the work covers quite sensitive themes about abuse — tell me about your approach to working with the libretto and its subtext?
When I was writing Screenshot, my approach to working with text changed a lot. The work was about sexual abuse, and the libretto complied from anonymous reports from survivors. I did not have much context — which I chose not to have, stripping them down to the bare minimum. Obviously, it is something that is really important to people, and they have a lot to say about it — rightly so — but I wanted [to] say all of that with music. Being the one in control of the text changed a lot for me; it instilled my creative desire to have that simplicity.
Again, subtext is important. The libretto takes up three A4 pages; they are very slim paragraphs, you can just read that and understand most of the story, most of the feeling. So if you only wanted to engage with the base level — i.e. what the vocalist is singing — you can do that and you can get something from it. Then, you can go a step deeper, and [then] deeper. I think that’s really what is important to me, and continues to be important when I’ve set things: I don’t have an interest in setting words in a way that isn’t understandable.
What would you say is the relationship between the music and text — were there any techniques you used to connect the two elements together?
It really depends. With Screenshot, the text transforms throughout the opera; there are definitely moments where I wanted the singer and the ensemble to play opposites with each other. One of the big things I remember is that I wrote half of this opera, and then I went to Darmstadt — that changed so much for me, but it also changed the direction that the opera took.
One of the refrains that comes back in Screenshot is the word “stop”. In the first instance where that is said, the whole ensemble stops and then comes back in after a pause. But whilst I was at Darmstadt, one of the tutors said: “We’ve had hundreds of years of women saying stop and no one listening, so why are they listening here?”
It was such a lightbulb moment. Originally, my feeling with text was to take it further — take it outside of it — but with Screenshot for the first time, I could have the opposing argument in the ensemble against the singer. That was really exciting. Another composer at Darmstadt said to me “you’re only having this singer’s voice which makes it propaganda and not art — we need both sides”. I have quite a lot of feelings about that — we have a lot of art which tells a traditional patriarchal view with this sort of thing. But at the same time, it was beautiful for me to be able to create this backlash against the singer’s narrative, but then to be able to bring it together in harmony.
Another interesting part of the opera was in the third scene. It’s called ‘The Call’; it takes place after the abuse incident has taken place, and the main character is on the phone — it’s unclear if she is speaking to a friend or a helpline — you hear her speak out this text, and there is a lot of stopping. It goes “sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m sorry” — lots of repetition, very broken — and you have these big, drone-like waves of sound. There is so much energy in Screenshot, but this [is] the first time there is this inertia. It’s almost the way that it stretches out makes you feel sick, because you don’t know how it’s going to end or if there’s a way out. It’s this first idea of agency because she’s the one leading it and not the ensemble. Being able to oppose a journey and to support it, was a really beautiful thing — I think that’s what built the world.
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You mentioned that you attended Darmstadt during the composition of this opera. Was there anything you took from there that changed your thoughts and approach with Screenshot?
It changed everything. One of the biggest things was that conversation where someone said to me: “Why is this art and not just propaganda against something? It could just be an advertisement”. I remember coming out of that and thinking to myself “well that was a load of rubbish” — my first thought was “I hate this, and this man is wrong, and I disagree” — and the more I thought, I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I remember I was obsessing over it, having my mind opened by that many different perspectives.
At the end of the day, for me, composition is just about connection. I want to tell stories and build worlds. That’s what excites me — it’s what excites people as human beings. Darmstadt is a big place of connection where people come from all over the world to talk about making things, and people feel things that make people connect further. During my time there, I have never felt like I knew so little about something. -laughs- It was a really freeing experience; you would just go to three or four concerts a day and it was incredible. I think I did suffer when I first came back when I would write — I would be over-analysing everything — and that took some time to do away with.
It was not directly related to Darmstadt, but I broke my leg the December before I went there. I couldn’t walk for three months, and had to have major knee surgery. There was something about that that really cemented what is important for me when I write music; suddenly when you can’t walk, there’s not a lot else to do, and you realise how limited your space is. Being able to write really opened my world up and gave me other spaces to be.
So that, coupled with going to Darmstadt, gave me a lot of thinking space. For all of me saying that harmony is not the be all and end all for me earlier — it is actually kind of the backbone. I do believe that the theory has to be really strong, even if it’s not my end point. In the last couple of years, I feel like I have reached a point where I am quite happy with what I’ve got. I think Screenshot was the first time that this has happened in a big way: combining traditional, functional harmony — with the informance of intervals, perfect and imperfect consonances and dissonances — with twelve tone classes and interval vector theory. Bringing that all together made me feel like I could build a world in a convincing way, that would tell the stories that I wanted to tell.
Following the premiere of Screenshot, you’re returning to choral music — with a new commission for the ORA Singers. Could you tell me about how you tend to source text in your choral writing?
One of the things that I am interested in is bringing together sacred and secular choral music. I’ve been writing a lot for voices in my work, but those two things haven’t really met. I set Latin when I originally wrote for ORA — [and I’m setting] it again for them at the moment. The piece for the ORA Singers is a reflection on Lassus’ Omnes de Saba, and the first thing I did was translate the Latin. Some of the words used have multiple translations which could suggest something else: there’s one instance where the text refers to the kings of Tarshish. It was the end of the known world in biblical times, so it’s talking about the ends of the earth — it’s not just a place.
I didn’t want to set a translation, and I didn’t really find any of the poetry that held onto that richness in such a small space of work. I think that’s something that I always find beautiful. With other choral music that I’ve written, I have set poetry by Sean Borodale — I was really lucky to go ahead and set his work. One of the reasons why I was so drawn to it was that he does so much with so little. I think Rebecca Saunders talks about drawing sound from silence; I just love that idea. If it doesn’t need to be there, then don’t put it there — if it’s going to be there, let it have value. I feel he does that really well.
With this new work for the ORA Singers, how much did you take influence from the original Lassus setting?
I did spend some time with the original Lassus. One of the things that struck me about it was that it is so ahead of its time. The way it’s laid out, it’s in two choirs, it’s quite antiphonal — that’s really exciting to me. I love disparate voices and sounds coming together. That was the biggest thing that I took from it musically.
Spending time with the text, and knowing all of those implications… One word I remember laying out the harmony for was the word “and”. In the text it talks about people coming from “here and here and here” — and I wondered “how exciting is it to hear ‘and’ this many times”. It’s not very often when you work in new music and someone gives you a really happy thing to write. The text is all about the epiphany; the gist of it is that everyone is welcome, people are coming from really different places and they are all coming together. I think that is such a gift to be able to write about that, you know? Rather than direct little bits from his work, it’s that excitement that underpins that piece that I want to get through in mine.
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It’s obviously a completely different topic to Screenshot. When you are dealing with these different subject matters, texts and meanings, are there certain kinds of interchangeable rules that follow when dealing with different source materials?
Screenshot was a very difficult opera. There are some parts of it that are very harrowing, but what was important for me in that opera is that it is ultimately redemptive. I have no interest in writing an opera which ends with everything being terrible. If we are using art for anything, we should be using it to uplift people.
I approach composition in a way that some people talk about empathy, now that I think about it. When you are talking about empathy, the important thing is that there is space for everything — there’s space for bits of darkness or bits of light in Screenshot. There’s still space for that in [the] Omnes that I’m writing. It needs to have that light and shade — and might have more light then Screenshot does — but they both need to be there, otherwise it’s not interesting to me.
Broadly, I group the modes that I am working with [as] perfect consonance, imperfect consonance, and dissonance. In Screenshot, dissonance is at the really uncomfortable point of the opera, perfect consonance is a redemptive light, and imperfect consonance the idea of naivety or innocence (without depth) — but it sort of also acknowledges dissonance. There’s both dark and light, they coexist.
I suppose the biggest thing for me when writing the Omnes was recontextualising them — it’s going to have dissonance, but there’s no really “terrible” things happening here. When I set the word “myrrh” — with all of the implications of that, it’s quite a dark word to set. We’ve got this really joyous moment where everybody is together and we are still talking about a really dark harrowing death that is going to happen thirty years in the future. Writing the Omnes is amazing, because biblical text is actually all about human naïvety; it’s really fascinating because there are moments of plain humanity. I think it’s recontextualising things in their different ways to still create that full image.
It’s like you can’t demonstrate the amount of shade, or light / darkness, without having some sort of contrast to sort of go with it.
Yes, and that’s why context is so important to me. I don’t just want to have random darkness, that makes no sense to me; I want [it] to be there for a reason. I’m very lucky to have a wonderfully supportive family who come to most of the things that I do — but they also find some of it quite hard to listen to. I think one of the big problems I see in contemporary music sometimes — or at least definitely saw in myself when I started at college — [is that] some of the hardest things to listen to get the most praise.
Contemporary music is a space which could be so welcoming for so many people, and it’s not. If people have context that makes sense, if people know why things are there, people can get excited — even if some of it is difficult. But if you just give people ten minutes of very difficult dissonant writing, then most people will not want to be there. I love a lot of contemporary music — but there are some things that if I’m not in the space for, I’m going to find it hard to listen to.
The other thing that I’m really aware of at the moment is [that] I left RNCM in June, and moved out of the house that I was living in with friends of mine. Most of us are still in Manchester, but I wasn’t sure how long I would be here — so I moved in as a lodger with a woman in her 50s. She had a piano from when her daughter was little, so there’s a piano here, which is the biggest stroke of luck — her grown up daughter is back from uni sometimes. None of these people are musically trained, but yet I can still talk about music in this space — everyone [here] wants to be a part of contemporary music. It’s the first time that I’m in a space where I have been able to curate the musicians that I want to spend time with. It’s been very affirming that new music can be for everybody if people allow it to be.
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There is this unhealthy stereotype of the artist being quite standoffish with their audience: “oh if you don’t understand it, then that’s your problem”. Would you say that these conversations — spending time with non-musicians — encouraged you to bring more context to your work?
I remember having a conversation one evening, going to bed, and being so excited to get up and write — because I felt that discussion I had about writing music had felt like a big party that everyone could be invited to. When I started studying composition, I had a lot of moments where I was so excited about it, but a lot of the time it felt as though there wasn’t a space for me. And I was the one who was training there! I think it should be a space where we are talking — I know it can be a really vulnerable space, and people can be misunderstood when you create a piece of art — but also what is its purpose if it’s not there to serve all of us? If we are lucky enough to do something we love, and not hurt anyone, and make a bit of a living out of that, then why shouldn’t there be space where everyone can be part of that?
I’ve had colleagues who have had various very strong opinions of how music should be written [and] consumed. One of the big ones I’ve found — which I find ridiculous — is recently, after Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year, I’ve had people be like: “How could you consume ‘low art’ if you’re an artist? It’s going to filter into your work?” I just think that is ridiculous. The other day, I went to a concert [of] Boulez and Ravel and had a great time — then yesterday, I was cleaning my room and I listened to Taylor Swift. Both things should be able to coexist. I think that sort of pretentiousness and classism — the idea that we can classify things as “high” and “low” art — is ridiculous. I think it is that sort of dialogue which puts [some] people off wanting to be involved in new music at all.
It’s crazy that there is still that attitude going around — considering that composers throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th century would surround themselves with all sorts of other art forms.
I’m a multi-faceted composer — and being a composer is only a part of who I am. I create art because I am a human, not because I am a composer. I have lots of different work in my life that is exciting to me; it brings me joy. I think that there is not enough joy in contemporary music, and I think that there can be a lot more.
I think more and more — particularly with the advent of AI — we’re going towards audiences and practitioners having more interest in artists’ lives. Ultimately, your identity, your lived experiences, and how you promote things will feed into peoples’ perceptions of your work…
I heard an author on a podcast talking about reading literature by AI — and she said “if someone hasn’t bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?” I feel the same way about new music. If someone hasn’t taken their time to put the effort in or thought about it, then I have no interest in consuming it.
With Screenshot, I had a whole social media plan, which went over three or four months; and I made sure that it got what it needed to get. I am a composer, but also a woman — I don’t want to be a woman composer who only talks about my gender, but it is important for me to talk about. When I look at myself ten years ago, it was something that I needed to hear. It was only when I was 17 when I was starting to be aware that there were women writing music; that’s so late! So if that’s [where] the next generation of young composers, the next generation of young women who are going to write music, are coming from, then that’s the media that I have to engage with — and that’s really important.
You mentioned earlier about the ORA Singers commission — whenabouts is that taking place? Do you have any other projects on the go, as well?
Yes! The premiere is at the Stoller Hall [on] the 29th April. The event is named The Passing of the Year, [and it] features Jonathan Dove’s work of the same name as well as a new commission by Tom Coult — and lots of beautiful Renaissance work, as well. I have loved writing that piece of music. Choral music is so exciting to me because we can all be part of it — everyone can sing, right? We all have that touchstone of it being something that’s important to us. But also, for me, the ORA Singers really were the springboard for me being the professional composer where I am now; so to have this full circle moment with them is such a privilege.
Then, I will be moving to London in September. I have a scholarship for the Guildhall — I will be going there to do my Masters. I’m trying not to over-commit before then. In the final year of my undergrad, I wrote 75 minutes of music and I was exhausted — so lots of listening, lots of thinking and gearing up towards that Masters. In terms of projects, [there’s] no hard and fast plans yet after the ORA Singers commission, just some conversations that are in the mix. But there’s where I’m at.
It’s wonderful to have a year of with less intensity — to have more of a year of exploration.
Definitely. Composition — and all of music — is such a grind culture. I’m not an evening person and I’ll never be one of those people who stays up until 2am writing; but I am a morning person. When I was at college, I was getting up at 5am and writing for three hours before going into the building; when I started working for the BBC last January, while I was still at college, I’d get up and write for two hours and then go to my day job. It was so exhausting, and I’m proud of myself for doing all of that work — but now I’m grateful to be able to give myself time to just live, and create the art that I wish to make.
I’m never going to write good art if I don’t feel safe, secure, and happy. I’m not interested in putting those things last anymore. I want them now — because I will create better art and I will be happier when I’m doing that. So that’s what this year is about. It’s not really a year “out” — it’s a year of trying something a bit different.
You can’t be a composer without being a human first. So if I can’t look after myself as a human, then I can’t create anything that’s worthwhile, you know? There’s lots of great art that’s come out of people coming out of adversity — I’m very aware that I’m privileged to be able to lead a full life — but I don’t want to create art because I feel like I’m lacking something. I want to create art because my life is so full and I can’t bear not to create anything.
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Catch Emily Pedersen’s premiere for the ORA Singers on 29th April 2025 at Stoller Hall, Manchester:
Learn more about Emily and her practice:
- https://emily-pedersen.com/
- https://soundcloud.com/emilypedersencomposer
- https://www.youtube.com/@emilypedersen5056
- https://www.instagram.com/emilypedersencomposer/
- https://www.tiktok.com/@emilypedersencomposer
References/Links:
- Sophie Mackintosh, ‘The ghost novel’ (2023), Little Intimacies
- Orlande de Lassus – Omnes de Saba, LV 973
- Tarshish (2022), Biblemapper
- James Saunders, interview with Rebecca Saunders (2006), James Saunders
- Emily Pedersen, ”I want to allow women to see themselves on an opera stage in an honest and dignified way’ – composer Emily Pedersen on writing Screenshot’ (2024), Opera Now
- Jonathan Dove – ‘The Passing of the Year’ (2000)
