Call for Compositions (closed)

The competition is open to composers aged 18 or older who are legal residents of a Creative Europe eligible country. There are no restrictions on nationality or citizenship. At least one commission will be awarded to a composer aged 35 or under.

Legal residency refers to your principal place of residence — the country where you are officially registered and actually live at the time of the submission deadline (31 July 2026). Citizenship or nationality alone is not sufficient. Financial or administrative ties to a country, such as a bank account, phone number, or family connections, do not constitute legal residency. Applicants must be able to demonstrate legal residency through official documentation showing their name and registered address in a Creative Europe eligible country — for example, a national ID card, official registration document, or equivalent issued by local authorities.

Unfortunately not. While a UK-based ensemble is indeed participating as part of the Europasinfonie orchestra, eligibility for the composition competition is governed by the Creative Europe programme’s list of eligible countries, as set out in Section 6.3 of the Call for Scores. The United Kingdom is not currently included in this list. Legal residency in one of the listed Creative Europe eligible countries at the time of the submission deadline (31 July 2026) is required.

You submit an excerpt of at least 2 minutes from your proposed work. If selected, you will develop this into a full commissioned work of 15 to 20 minutes.

No. The excerpt may consist of separate sections drawn from different parts of the proposed work, as long as the total duration is at least two minutes.

The excerpt should reflect the instrumentation the composer intends for the complete work. It does not need to include every instrument, but it should be representative of the full proposed work’s scoring. Note that the complete work is expected to include all instrumental groups listed in the Call for Scores (see also: „Must all instrumental groups and locations be represented in a submitted work?“).

No. The competition is open to individual composers only. Each submission must be the sole work of a single composer. Co-authored works are not eligible.

Yes. You may enter one or both categories, submitting one excerpt per category. The jury will commission two orchestral works and one orchestral work with choir.

Yes. All scores must be submitted without the composer’s name or any identifying information. Any submission containing such details will be disqualified. Composers should use only a code name or working title on their materials.

The participating ensembles are grouped into three latency zones – ranging from under 20 ms to around 35-40 ms. Composers are encouraged to treat these not as technical constraints but as creative material. Detailed technical information is available in the downloadable Call for Scores.

This is an important question. According to the current technical concept described in the Call for Scores (Annex: Technical Concept), all audio signals are routed through a central server in Frankfurt/Main in a star topology: each location transmits its signal to Frankfurt, which mixes and simultaneously relays it to all participants. Under this model, the latency between any two remote locations depends on the combined signal paths of both through Frankfurt.

The technical development of Europasinfonie is an ongoing process. Alternative network configurations are currently being discussed and tested in collaboration with the artistic and technical teams. Any updates to the technical parameters — including detailed inter-orchestra latency data — will be published on this website as the project develops. All values remain indicative at this stage.

The latency values given in the Call for Scores are one-way latency values — specifically, the time from the conducting impulse in Dresden to the point at which a musician at a remote location sees or hears it. As noted in the Technical Annex, these values are inclusive of all sources of delay: the video transmission chain, network travel time, and monitoring setup (mouth-to-ear latency).

*Note on figures below: the Call for Scores published indicative zone ranges (Zone A: under 20 ms; Zone B: 20–30 ms; Zone C: 30–40 ms). Without the high-performance GÉANT research network, the network round-trip between Dresden and a Zone C location would typically be around 60–80 ms. GÉANT reduces this to approximately 40 ms round-trip (around 20 ms one-way), enabling the zone values stated in the Call to be achieved in practice. The figures below reflect current estimates based on the confirmed GÉANT infrastructure.*

For a Zone C location such as Athens, this one-way latency — from the conductor’s beat to the moment a musician sees the baton — is approximately 35 ms: around 15 ms for the video chain plus around 20 ms for the network. This falls within the Zone C range stated in the Call.

Your observation about four signal legs is correct when considering the complete feedback loop: the conductor’s beat travels out to the remote musicians (two legs via Frankfurt), and their sound travels back to Dresden (two further legs via Frankfurt). For Zone C, this full round-trip — from the conductor’s beat to the moment the conductor hears the sonic result — is approximately 65 ms.

Composers should therefore work with the one-way latency as the operative figure: this is what each musician receives and must respond to. The full feedback loop (what the conductor hears) involves the additional return path but does not alter the compositional challenge for the remote ensembles.

This is technically possible, but the decision depends on the artistic intention. If the goal is simply to ensure a stable latency, there is no advantage to setting it higher than the actual network latency. However, if a composer has a structural concept that requires a specific, predetermined delay between sections as a compositional parameter, a fixed offset can be added on top of the actual network latency. Composers with such intentions are encouraged to discuss this with the production team after the jury selection.

Yes. The Europasinfonie orchestra is a distributed ensemble in which each partner organisation contributes a specific group of instruments. Composers are expected to write for the full instrumentation as set out in the Call for Scores. All instrumental groups — and therefore all partner locations — should have meaningful parts in the work.

No. Parts must be written for all three members of the percussion section: the timpanist (5 timpani) and both percussionists. However, the Call for Scores does not prescribe specific instruments for the two percussionists — composers are free to choose which percussion instruments they use, as long as all three players are actively engaged in the work.

No. The instrumentation listed in the Call for Scores is binding in full. A reduced scoring — such as writing for only two of the three woodwind players per section — is not acceptable. All players in each section must be given active parts in the work.

There is no requirement to use the doubling instruments. Whether to employ piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet, and contrabassoon is left entirely to the composer’s discretion. All three players in each woodwind group must be given parts, but the third player may remain on their primary instrument throughout if that serves the work.

The percussion section is contributed by the Brussels Philharmonic. All standard orchestral percussion instruments are available, including timpani, concert bass drums, vibraphone, xylophone, marimba (4⅓ octaves), glockenspiel, tubular bells, tam-tams, cymbals, snare drums, toms, crotales, temple blocks, woodblocks, congas, bongos, wind machine, thunder plate, lion’s roar, and a broad range of auxiliary instruments.

For non-standard or unusual instruments, requirements will be assessed individually. Commissioned composers will have the opportunity to clarify specific needs with the ensemble after the jury selection.

Basic use of electronics is possible. Composers wishing to incorporate electronic elements must bring their own technical equipment to Dresden and operate it themselves or with the assistance of a designated operator. Electronic signals can be fed to the front-of-house mixing desk via a stereo XLR input. Room-based or surround sound configurations are not possible within the performance setup.

Complex sensor-based systems — such as those involving body-worn sensors, EEG devices, or similar technologies — exceed the technical scope that the production can accommodate and are therefore not permitted.

Any use of electronic elements must be approved by the Sound Director of the performance. Specific technical requirements will be coordinated individually with commissioned composers after the jury selection.

Yes. Individual singers within the choir groups may be given solo passages.

Yes. 5 five-string double basses can be guaranteed.

Yes. The trombone and tuba section is contributed by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in Tallinn. Their confirmed setup includes a tuba and up to three trombones, one of which may be a bass trombone.

No. A click track is not compatible with the performance concept of Europasinfonie. Andrea Molino conducts the entire ensemble live from Dresden, and the performance will not be supported by a click track.

The audio from all networked orchestras will be reproduced through the main front-of-house system — a standard Left-Centre-Right PA configuration. Dedicated loudspeakers associated with the individual LED screens are not currently planned.

Composers should therefore note that the remote orchestras will not be individually positioned in space through separate speaker systems. The visual separation of ensembles via the twelve LED screens above the stage will, however, provide a strong spatial reference for the audience.

The livestream will be produced in stereo. While no final decision on the precise panorama layout has been made, the mix is expected to follow a traditional orchestral arrangement rather than a geographically-mapped positioning of the remote sections. Composers are not able to specify the panorama layout as part of the score — this is a production decision.

All musicians will receive an in-ear monitor mix allowing them to hear all other participating sections as well as themselves. There is a single conductor: Andrea Molino directs the entire ensemble from Dresden. A video feed of the conductor is transmitted to all partner locations simultaneously. There are no additional conductors at the remote sites.

There is no maximum page size. The competition submission consists of a PDF file only — no printed score is required at any stage of the application process, regardless of page format.

However, composers who choose to work in a format larger than A3 should be aware that if their work is selected, they will be responsible for providing a printed conducting score as part of the final delivery of the commissioned work. Printing and any associated costs are the responsibility of the composer.

Texts must be in a language of one of the Creative Europe eligible countries (see Section 6.3 of the Call for Scores for the full list). Multilingual texts are accepted. Latin is also permitted as an additional exception, given its longstanding tradition in choral music and its shared European cultural heritage.

Composers are responsible for securing all necessary rights to any text used. Confirmation of rights status will be required in the application form. For texts in less widely spoken languages, an English translation must be submitted alongside the score excerpt.

Yes. Composers must confirm that they have secured the right to set the chosen text to music and to perform, broadcast, and record the resulting work as described in the Call for Scores. Any arrangement between the composer and the text author or publisher regarding royalty sharing — for example through a collecting society such as GEMA — is a separate matter between the parties involved and is not regulated by this competition.

The written statement must be submitted in English. This applies to both the description of the compositional concept and, for works with choir, the note on the chosen text and its relevance to the work.

No. The Europasinfonie network comprises twelve fixed partner locations. No additional transmission nodes — including a separate location for the composer — will be established.

Yes. Non-traditional notation is accepted. This includes graphic notation, aleatoric elements, proportional notation for entries and durations, extended instrumental and vocal techniques, and the use of voices or simple objects for instrumentalists.

The Call for Scores requires that submitted scores be prepared to professional standards of notation and legibility (Section 7). This applies equally to non-traditional scores: the notation must be clear and unambiguous, with any symbols, ranges, or graphic elements explained in a legend or performance notes.

A complete temporal alignment of all groups is not planned. Timing differences between the Dresden strings and the remote instrumental groups will remain audible to the audience — and composers may treat this as a compositional parameter.

That said, a partial reduction of the timing gap is possible and planned. Since the Dresden string orchestra is amplified through a PA system in the concert hall, a small delay of approximately 20 ms can be introduced to the strings‘ PA signal, bringing it slightly closer in time to the remote groups. For a Zone C location (approximately 65 ms round-trip), this would reduce the perceived gap to approximately 45 ms.

The handling of timing in the livestream mix is managed separately by the production team in Frankfurt and may differ from the live hall experience.