Putting A Subjective Idea Into An Objective Box

It's that time of year again --- no, not March Madness (even though it is that, too --- go tarheels) --- time for auditions for collegiate musicians across America. I myself have fallen into that trap, preparing for my grad school auditions and one topic kept appearing during my conversations with many other musicians undergoing the same plight. How do you take something as subjective as music, and even more so an audition and frame it in an objective way that can be understood by all?

"Well if the stars are aligned, the weather is just right, my instrument is fine, I'm not sick and someone sprinkles me with fairy dust then maybe i'll be fine."

True, there will always be a level of the audition process that is easy. Sometimes you have people who are amazing and you have people who are less than stellar. Those are the easy decisions. But most of the time, it's a little bit more complicated than that. Usually, it involves deciding which one has a better vibrato, more musical interpretation (that you can agree with), choice of tempi, the smallest, most minute things that make the difference. And this is where there's a difference of opinion. Sometimes as a musician, it's out of your control. They may not like your sound that day or there just may be someone they like more.

Then how do we as musicians deal with that?

This does not apply just to college musicians. The same goes for auditions in professional symphonies. I've heard stories of orchestras closing auditions for a time because they just weren't pleased with anyone that day and asked everyone to come back, no fault to them. For them, there's much more at stake. The relationship between that of the musician and the symphony is one that can last for several years and, in many instances, bear fruit for both parties.

But honestly, the audition is the not first place in music where we come to this dilemma. Critics and reviewers, historians and just your average listener encounter this daily. What if I don't like a piece of music that the collective tells me is a masterwork? As it stands, judging on any level is completely human and will always occur in every facet of art. How we choose to judge what we listen to do and what we think is good, whether it is buying a recording or deciding who gets into college, is an aspect of the human mind that I'll leave others more skilled than I to evaluate.