BassDad

Musical word of the interval: Etude - a piece written to allow the musician to develop and display technical skills. Etudes frequently come in sets that can range from fairly simple warmup exercises to lengthy studies composed with the specific intent of being nearly impossible to play. While some etudes also manage to be musically pleasing, most are intended to be used as practice tools rather than to be performed for an audience.

This brings us directly to

Installment #4, Planning for Auditions

Auditions are a way of life for aspiring performing artists. They start at an early age and may well continue throughout a performer's entire career. It seems almost paradoxical that an enterprise requiring the utmost cooperation among a team of highly-trained professionals would be rooted in a competitive system of subjective judgments of an individual's skills as briefly demonstrated under highly artificial circumstances, yet there it is. The best bits of advice I have received about auditions are to treat each one as you would a major performance ("there are no auditions, only performances"), to audition as often as possible, and to always request feedback from the judges, particularly when the results were unfavorable.

College admission auditions are similar to one another in that there is a lot at stake. Beyond that, there are more differences than similarities among the various colleges and conservatories. Some schools and teachers are very good at putting prospective students at ease and coaxing the best possible performance out of them. Others seem to prefer maximizing stress levels as a kind of trial by fire. Some are very specific and inflexible in terms of audition repertoire while others will hear almost anything the applicant cares to play. Some auditions are very impersonal with nearly no interaction between teacher and student, while others turn into mini-lessons with lots of back-and-forth. What follows is the text of a presentation that I recently gave to some parents of aspiring music majors in sophomore and junior year of high school (with thanks to binx and mommab for their input):

A 15 to 30 minute audition will be the single most important factor in gaining admission to a music school or conservatory. In some cases, it counts for 90% or more of the admission decision. Since most aspiring music majors wind up applying to several schools, it is very important to select a core set of pieces that will satisfy the audition requirements at all of them. The final choice of pieces will be largely the decision of your son or daughter's music teacher, but it is wise to have an early discussion with that teacher about the schools involved and their audition requirements.

Some schools are very accomodating and will tell the applicant to prepare (for example) an etude, contrasting movements from a concerto and two orchestral excerpts of the student's choice. Others are more rigid and limit the selection to a relative handful of choices, with any substitutions requiring department approval several weeks before the audition. It takes careful planning a year or more ahead of time to come up with a set of pieces large enough to satisfy the audition requirements at each school, yet small enough to give the student enough practice time on each piece.

Research and communication are essential in this process. Nearly every major school of music and conservatory lists audition requirements on their website. If you think there is even a possibility that you will apply to a school, it is worth taking the time to check out their audition requirements online.

There are many variables involved and it is important to understand exactly what is wanted by the applicable department or departments of any given school. Sometimes a pre-screening tape is required and sometimes there are multiple rounds of auditions with callbacks. The audition material may be the same or different for earlier and later rounds. Piano accompaniment may be mandatory, optional or forbidden. If accompaniment is needed, the school may want you to use one of their accompanists or may expect you to provide your own.

Some schools only hold auditions on campus, while others give the applicant the choice of an audition on campus or at one of a number of remote sites. The on-campus audition may be required for those who live within a certain distance of the school. In most auditions at remote locations and even in some on-campus auditions, the proceedings may be videotaped for later viewing by the faculty. While it is certainly possible to gain admission from such an audition, a face-to-face meeting with the teachers involved is usually the better way to go. If an on-campus interview is impossible, some teachers have been known to meet students at mutually convenient locations away from campus. Professional musicians tend to travel a lot, so it is worth a call or email to see if this might be a possibility.

We made a chart over the summer before junior year with the following column headings: Scales/Arpeggios, Etudes, Sonatas, Concertos, Solo Pieces, Orchestral Excerpts. Giving each potential school a row, we filled in as much information from the school websites as we could. At the bottom of each column, we listed the smallest set of pieces that we could find that would satisfy the requirements for all of them.

Starting with about fifteen schools, we soon discovered that there were several that had very specific, non-overlapping requirements. After contacting the teachers at those schools, we found that some were reasonably flexible in accepting substitutions and some were not. It became apparent that it would be very difficult to prepare simultaneous auditions for certain combinations of schools. We used that information to remove a couple of schools from consideration that had specific inflexible requirements and were lower in our order of preference for various other reasons. Once that was done, the list of audition pieces got down to a more reasonable size.

This information proved to be a valuable resource for my daughter and her teacher in selecting specific audition pieces. He refined our list with some inside knowledge about specific college teachers and the pieces they prefer to hear. In the end, we came up with one etude, one sonata, one concerto, one solo piece and three orchestral excerpts that satisfied all of her audition requirements for ten schools. This was still a fairly large set, but it helped my daughter and her teacher plan lessons for more than a year.

Once you have selected the schools and the audition pieces, the next hurdle is scheduling all of them. Some schools have elaborate online systems that let you schedule the audition yourself, some ask you to call for an appointment after a specified date, and some simply respond to your application with an appointed time and date. Most auditions are held on weekends from late January through early March, with specific dates often posted on school web sites. Conflicts are inevitable, so plan on keeping your calendar as free as possible during these periods and schedule the auditions as far in advance as possible so that you will have time to swap appointments as needed. Some schools require you to be present for a certain period before and after the audition time. This could involve information sessions, music theory placement tests, or an unscheduled extra round of auditions if the need arises. Be sure to find out all of the time requirements before scheduling two auditions in one day or making any travel plans.

Finally, I would like to pass on one more tip. All of the schools list scales and arpeggios as a required audition element but not many will ask to hear them. That does not mean the student should shortchange those items to spend more time rehearsing audition pieces. Scales and arpeggios are the foundation of good technique and any deficiency in those areas will be noticed in the audition, even if they are not played individually.

For those who have already been through this, what other information would you care to pass along concerning audition planning? I plan to discuss the audition process itself in a later article, but you are welcome to share insights about that part of the process either now or later.