I told one of my professors the other day that I converted my piece for 9 violins into a piece for 9 VIOLAS. He seemed pretty dismayed about this recent turn of events. "Why did you do it?" he asked. I told him I was having lunch one day and a whole bunch of violists were sitting at the table next to me. When they heard that I was working on a piece for 9 violins, they were like, "Why are you writing a piece for 9 violins? LAME. If you change it to 9 violas, we will TOTALLY play it."
DONE. I was promised a potential performance in May, and I'm pretty happy about the piece.
Anyway, back to the original conversation:
My professor told me to hold on to the original violin version (oops) because, if you think about it, how hard is it to round up 8 or 9 violinists to play a cool piece of music?
I would say...VERY HARD. I had the hardest time recruiting 4 violinists for my recital last year. Maybe they all assumed that *someone* would help me out, but that never happened.
So, the piece is for 9 violists instead. A few people have mentioned writing a version for 9 violins (version 1.2). It could be done. It worked for Arvo Pärt, I suppose. Question is, would this be worth my time?