Conducting postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

I applied to study conducting because the work I find most absorbing is rehearsal work: deciding what a group needs to hear next, and finding the gesture or the sentence that produces it. I came to this gradually. I trained as a clarinettist, and for most of my degree I assumed I would stay behind the music stand. What changed things was being asked to take wind sectionals for our university symphony orchestra in my second year, initially because our conductor was double-booked. I discovered that I could hear a balance problem quickly, and that explaining it was a separate skill I had barely begun to learn.

My BMus gave me the analytical grounding I now rely on. Score study in my harmony and analysis modules taught me to read a texture as a set of decisions rather than a wall of notes, and my final-year dissertation examined how Brahms handles wind doubling in the Second Symphony, comparing the written dynamics with what actually emerges in performance. Working through that repertoire bar by bar changed how I prepare anything: I now mark scores for who carries the line and who supports it before I think about my own movements. Alongside this, a module in historical performance introduced me to questions about tempo conventions and continuo practice that I would like to pursue further, particularly in Bach and Haydn.

My practical experience is student-level, but it has been consistent. With two friends I helped restart a university wind group that had lapsed during the pandemic, and I have directed it for two years. We began with eleven players and reached around twenty-four, programming Gounod's Petite Symphonie, arrangements of Grainger, and a piece written for us by a composition student. Planning those programmes taught me things no score study could: how to choose repertoire that flatters the players you actually have, how to structure ninety minutes so that the hardest passage is not rehearsed last, and how to keep goodwill when a section is short. I also learned to accept that a rehearsal I had planned in detail sometimes needed abandoning within ten minutes.

My independent project last year was an attempt to be more systematic about this. I filmed myself conducting the first movement of Beethoven's First Symphony with a piano reduction and a small group of volunteers, then watched the recordings with the score and wrote up what my hands were actually doing rather than what I believed they were doing. The recurring fault was a heavy, over-explained upbeat that made entries late. Working on it with a mirror and a metronome over several weeks produced a noticeable improvement in ensemble attack, and the exercise convinced me that I need sustained technical teaching and regular time in front of an ensemble, which is why I am applying now rather than later.

Outside music I work Saturdays and Sundays in a bakery, where I have been for three years and now open the shop and train new staff. It sounds unrelated, but giving clear instructions to tired people at six in the morning has probably improved my rehearsal manner more than anything else. I also teach two beginner clarinettists, which keeps me honest about how slowly a new physical habit forms.

I would like to develop a secure, unfussy technique, to broaden my knowledge of orchestral and choral repertoire well beyond what a student ensemble can reach, and to work regularly with singers, where my experience is thinnest. In the longer term I hope to build a career combining ensemble direction with teaching, most likely in a regional setting where amateur and youth groups do a great deal of the serious music-making.

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