Audition Expectations: Strings

AUDITION EXPECTATIONS: STRINGS

This section is catered more towards orchestral stringed instruments. If you are a guitar player please contact our guitar instructor Smokey Emerson for more information.

Undergraduate

•A Scale of your choice in three octaves

•Two or three contrasting works or movements.  (Piano accompaniment is not required)

•Sight Reading

Graduate

For a live audition towards graduate study, students should perform portions of two to three contrasting pieces, and they should expect to play scales and perform sight reading.

AUDITION EXPECTATIONS: HARP

Undergraduate

  • Orchestral excerpt, cadenza, or solo étude (memorization optional).
  • Solos:
      • BM: Select 2 contrasting movements or pieces from the categories below, including at least one solo from the 20th or 21st century. Memory required for at least one selection.
      • BA and BME: Select 2 contrasting movements or pieces from the categories below. Memorization is encouraged but not required.
      • Piano accompaniment is not required.
  • Sight-reading.

Categories for solo choices:

  • Baroque work by Bach or Handel (e.g. Bach-Grandjany etudes, Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith or Concerto in Bb)
  • Classical work (e.g. Dussek, Naderman, Pescetti, Dittersdorf)
  • Romantic work (e.g. Hasselmans, Godefroid, John Thomas)
  • 20th- or 21st-century work by Tournier, Debussy, Ravel, Salzedo, Grandjany, Renié, or similar. (Debussy transcriptions by Salzedo or Grandjany are accepted.)

Graduate

  • 1 orchestral excerpt or cadenzas: Memorization not required.
  • Solos: Choose 2 contrasting works from the categories above, including one piece by J.S. Bach and one 20th- or 21st-century piece. Memorization required for solos. Complete sonatas or multi-movement works are encouraged where appropriate.
  • Sight-reading.