Klarinet Archive - Posting 000272.txt from 1999/11

From: "Karl Krelove" <kkrelove@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] More about 'that' audition
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 14:33:07 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Pay [mailto:Tony@-----.uk]
> Sent: Sunday, November 07, 1999 4:50 PM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: Re: [kl] More about 'that' audition
>
>
> I really think that this is an interesting question precisely because it
> makes us consider what an audition is *for*.
>
> Is it to be fair to the community of clarinet players at large?
>
> ...or is it to try to find the best player for the job?
>
> If the latter, to give *any* player the benefit of the doubt, and pass
> him/her to the next round, can only increase the likelihood that we find
> the best player for the job. It can't *decrease* it.
>
> Tony

The root of the problem, I think, is the notion that there _is_ a "Best"
player for a given job and that an audition can ever be a "fair" way of
finding that Best Player. The audition process is the most practical method
we seem able to develop of selecting players to fill vacancies in every
ensemble from a major symphony to a junior high band. It is, if sufficiently
exhaustive, an effective way of selecting a player who can fill the job
well. It has the added attraction of _appearing_ to be "fair" to the
performers who wish to compete for the job in a professional climate in
which there are far more candidates than positions.

But an audition process, because its purpose is to eliminate candidates at
each of several stages, cannot really be fair to anyone. An audition can
only measure how a player performed during a given five or ten minute period
of time under a set of atypical performing conditions, not the totality of
his playing. Faced with the evidence in recordings of innumerable orchestras
throughout the world, it seems evident that there are uncountable legions of
capable players on every instrument, and more graduate from the major music
schools every year, and many of these show up for any audition. It is
simply inconceivable to me that there is truly only one player who is best
for any job even if you limit consideration to the hundred plus candidates
who actually decide to attend. At some point, I think right after the few
are eliminated who obviously ought to be thinking of a career change, the
whole audition process becomes a survival game in which each candidate is
taken through a succession of mine fields and the one who hasn't been blown
up by the end gets the job.

Let me hasten to add that I don't see any other way to do this. As full of
pitfalls as the process is, it is probably the only one available primarily
because of the sheer number of applicants who turn up for any job that
opens. But to the question as Tony Pay posed it, "Is (the audition's
purpose) to be fair to the community of clarinet players at large?...or is
it to try to find the best player for the job?" the answer I think is be
"No." It isn't an effective way to do either. It is inherently unfair
because it can't really measure what it's intended (or purported) to measure
(the totality of a candidate's playing), and it can't be relied on to find
what may not exist, a single Best Player whose ability to do the required
job is demonstrably greater that that of any other candidate.

Karl Krelove

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