<p>AIliens, the Bach fugue instrumentation is to see if the applicant can take a relatively simple piece of music and create something interesting out of it via electronic instrumentation/arrangement. Because it is a Bach fugue, it “levels” the playing field a bit to compare candidates choices in approach and outcome, which is harder to do with a candidate’s original music. This particular program is a BFA degree, (or it can be a BMus) meaning it is an applied studio curriculum that is more hands on than a typical academic/BA program, so it is geared to those already practicing the talents they want to hone. Only a handful of applicants are accepted. So to a degree, the exercise helps screen to an extent for ones capacity to read and interpret music and then apply the innate sense of instrumentation, the latter of which I do not doubt that you have in spades having listened to your works in progress. </p>
<p>I think, for example, you could make short work of the exercise. The larger issue in the case of that program and a few programs like it is that theory is delivered at a very high degree of rigor and even students who have been principals in wind ensembles for years are often told to bone up on theory and writing before undertaking this work.</p>
<p>I believe that is because ultimately, it is collaborative work. So let me give you and example from a different discipline. I know several self-taught programmers who can be downright brilliant. In fact, I employ one such. It has taken us 13 years to drill into him the documentation habits required to work collaboratively…and I’m not sure we’re there yet :)</p>
<p>Possessing a command of theory and its inherent conferring of the capacity to write music ( or “communicate”) your musical ideas is to some degree the difference between a savant and a professional.</p>
<p>You clearly have the talent. You’d like to become a professional. I feel if you’re willing to learn the language (and it doesn’t need to be via a degree…though that is shorthand to communicate that you know it) there would be nothing to stop you 
To do otherwise would form a handicap you need not have in a competitive world, though sometimes those long odds do pay off!</p>