Singing their way through finals: preparation for finals week at SRU

Swope Music Hall, home of the music department at SRU.

It's 1:00 the Friday before finals week. Walking into Swope Music Hall, the following scene unfolds: two students are relaxing in the music lounge reviewing their notes, a clarinet player is replenishing his reeds before practice, and a young student is walking into the building humming her warm-up exercises. Now what does this scene represent? It represents preparation for finals week in the music department here at SRU.

Just like any other department within the university, the music department maintains a unique system of finals that demand appropriate skills from its students within the field. A major that is predominantly performance-based, the finals that are demanded of these students require demonstrations of skill via instrument playing, singing, as well as composition pieces. Not so much the informative speeches and presentations of the ET major that we followed last week, finals in this department entail a greater performance aspect than is demanded for contrasting majors. One characteristic that these music finals do maintain in common with the communication finals we explored involves the synthesizing aspect; these tests require students to take the skills that they have been learning throughout the semester and put them together into one effective piece.

Check out this video below that shows what several students in the department think about final week.

Liz works on her composition piece that is due Wednesday of finals week.

This week we followed one particular student, Liz Biggart, during her preaparation. Liz, a 19-year old music therapy major from New Jersey, stated that this is her second time around tackling the intimidation that characterizes the week. "You would think that the second time I'd be more prepared and know what to expect," she states, "but even though I know what to expect, it's just as much daunting and scary as before!" Two major finals that Liz stated that she is preparing for include her music composition piece and her singing performance in front of a jury.

In regards to her musical composition, Liz is currently spending hours in the lab, weaving different layers and instruments of her piece together. Liz discusses the importance of this piece, stating, “This composition is kind of a a representation of everything that we’ve learned throughout the semester. It demonstrates our knowledge of music and our ability to replicate forms of it ourselves."

Check out this following interview with Liz as she works on her final composition piece.



Liz also has a musical performance that she must undertake Wednesday as part of her voice final. She must deliver a well-known piece in front of a musical jury consisting of anywhere between 4-6 faculty from the music department. During this performance, Liz will be graded on the pitch, articulation, rhythm, and tone of her singing.  The majority of voice majors, along with those in music therapy like Liz, must go through similar types of finals in which performance in front of a musical jury is key. Those in instrumentation fields must undergo performances such as these as well, the piano proficiency serving as just one example of these demanding performance-based tests. To hear part of Liz's performance, check out this video where she practices her jury piece.





For those of us students who do not fully understand the music department, a simple look at some of their activities in regards to finals truly serves as an eye-opener to the amount of work demanded in this field.

Finals week, as for the rest of SRU students, will come to a close on Friday of this week.    Stay tuned next week as we follow an exercise science major as he prepares for his tests before we close this series on finals week.