Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2008-06-09 12:50
I want to say something about the audition experience from 'the other side'.
My own days of auditioning are past; still, I remember that it's a difficult row to hoe.
But, I'd like to point out, being on the panel isn't much fun, either.
Contrary to the impression often given here, jury members are trying to do the right thing by the people auditioning BECAUSE THEY THEMSELVES WILL BENEFIT BY MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION. That's particularly true if the auditions are for places in orchestras or conservatoires -- but it's also true for competitions. We're idealistic enough, and care enough about music, to want the best player to win; we agonise over the decisions; we're happy when we agree about someone and we suffer when we have to argue.
But, leaving competitions aside, the idea 'one mistake, and you're out' couldn't be farther from the truth. On the contrary, we're trying to hear something good -- because we want something good in our orchestra, or in our conservatoire -- and labouring under the difficulty that an audition is a blunt instrument for assessing someone's potential.
I have personal experience of that 'blunt' quality, because I teach a summer course in Siena, and one of the rules of the Accademia is that everyone has to do an audition for a place in the class. So I make careful notes about everyone -- and then have a chance to see whether my initial impressions are borne out by their subsequent playing over the course. And though I am often right, I am also quite often surprised.
Now, in competition for limited places, it's obvious that if you are unsuccessful, that's because there were other people who we thought played better than you. So, we sometimes want to communicate something of that to you afterwards, saying that you played well -- if we thought you did. And so that your time hasn't been completely wasted, we might also want to say something about how your playing could be improved.
BUT -- and I've learnt this again from experience -- it's very, very difficult for an unsuccessful competitor to hear usefully anything critical said to them afterwards. That's because in that particular situation, they hold criticism not as a pointer toward something they might improve in their playing -- as they would in a lesson -- but as THE REASON WHY THEY WEREN'T SUCCESSFUL. And then it's so tempting for them to say: the only reason that that jury member could come up with for why they didn't like me was X (where X is something fairly trivial). So, the jury were stupid -- and therefore wrong.
I WAS ROBBED!
There's also the problem that it can be very difficult to characterise why we prefer one player to another. Player A has some strengths, player B some strengths. Player A has some weaknesses, player B some weaknesses. Yet overall we prefer player B. Why, exactly? Difficult to say.
Nowadays I avoid making comments to unsuccessful candidates. My last one was around 10 years ago, to a Spanish player who didn't make it to trial for a big orchestral position. I commented, by way of characterising just one aspect of 'the difference that had made a difference' between him and the other successful candidates, that his playing was perhaps a bit small in conception to cope with the demands of the job; to which he replied, with a sour expression on his face, that HE had studied in AMERICA; and THEY understood that a small sound was much more effective than it seemed. (So that was ME told.)
So now, in Morrigan's case, even though his post is still sitting there, I think he's been persuaded to move from his initial:
>> Just so that everyone knows, you can't go to the Conservatorium van Amsterdam unless you have German clarinets. I wasted my time and money going there to audition last weekend.>>
...because as fbouwer has pointed out, it isn't true.
I don't think, though, that he can see that the panel's remarks about the clarinet make and the Dutch sound could easily have been secondary to much subtler reasons why some other players were preferred to him on that occasion:
>> ...it felt like the panel were clutching at straws trying to justify why they couldn't accept me....I'm not bitter or anything, really, just not terribly amused by the reasons I was not offered a place.>>
Even the remarks about sound could very easily have been accurate and positively meant: though I don't know how Morrigan plays, it is perfectly possible that his personal approach to the instrument, French or not, wouldn't fit in well with that of other Dutch players. And because your relationship with the people you play with at College can significantly contribute to the ease of your transition between student and professional playing, you do best to have that be unproblematic.
BTW, I don't know how much of this 'not terribly amused' came over in his manner, but if any of it did, it might have made them just a little cross; much as reading about it makes me a little cross, frankly.
Finally, something about having lessons with people before auditioning: because, as I said, auditions are blunt instruments, and because we are trying to guess how someone may develop, more information is always better for us.
But notice, it can go both ways; clearly it's possible to damage your chances by exposing your deficiencies more clearly. So if you want to get in (or not) 'on your merits', then the more we know about you the more likely it is that you will get in 'on your merits' -- or not:-)
Tony
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