Klarinet Archive - Posting 001285.txt from 2000/10

From: "Karl Krelove" <kkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] A curricular issue
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 21:05:10 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rgarrett@-----.edu]
> Assume that there is no way to know about the
> "walk-on" student (non-music major) who decides to play that no one has
> heard of. We have a policy that allows any qualified student to audition
> and make any ensemble. We don't discriminate (not that I am trying to
> imply that other would be) against a non-music major. It's a competitive
> world, and the best players make it in. Let's say you have 12 flute
> openings in two wind ensemble (each a 48 piece ensemble - designed to fit
> on the stage and to accomodate the general size of the School of Music),
> and there are 20 flute auditions. Let's then say that the music major who
> did not make it in was 18th out of 10 majors and 10 non-majors.
>
>

These must be very good non-major flute players (or to keep it more
list-specific, let's change it to clarinet players). I can imagine this
happening in the abstract, but I'm having a hard time with the thought that
it happens often in the real world, unless clarinet (flute) #18 out of 20
really isn't at an appropriate level in the first place for the program
he/she was accepted into. You haven't said whether the other majors were
accepted into the ensembles (placed within the first 12) or whether more of
them are getting beaten by engineering and journalism majors. And since it's
a hypothetical situation it's probably a waste of energy to construct the
scene any more explicitly because it just becomes more and more unlikely, I
would think, as a practical matter (or does it? - you're there; I'm not!).

It seems to me, though, as a general proposition, that a school owes its
students what it promises them, and when it explicitly requires
participation in "the appropriate major ensemble" the implication is that a
wind player will be expected to play, at the very least, in some kind of
wind ensemble. It isn't exactly formal logic, but it seems to follow that
there should then be an ensemble in which he/she can expect to play if his
level of playing is acceptable for admission. My answer to your original
question is that the university needs to provide "the appropriate" outlet.
Choral experience is of value to any musician and especially to any musician
preparing to teach in the schools, and it should, in my opinion (based on 25
years' teaching in a public school music department), be a separate
requirement. But it isn't what's implied by the words "the appropriate
major ensemble" for a wind player. The music school ought either to expand
one ensemble enough to accomodate all its students who don't make other
groups by audition or, alternatively, make a policy change and accept
non-majors only as space in the ensembles permits after all majors are
placed.

I'm now curious, of course, about what the actual point of discussion is at
your school, the "curricular change that we are implementing."

Karl Krelove

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