Music graduates to receive ABRSM diploma

Lipscomb University’s Music Department will be the first in the nation to require music majors to sit for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music exams, beginning next year.

 

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, established in 1880, is a system of exams that have been given throughout the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth for 125 years. More than 620,000 exams are now administered annually by a very select and highly trained group of examiners to students not only in the British Commonwealth, but also in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Spain, Malaysia, Korea, Mexico and Mainland China, according to Jerome Reed, professor of music at Lipscomb. The criteria to become an examiner are so rigid that only seven out of every 100 applicants who apply to be examiners are accepted. The judging criteria for these exams are so precise and consistent that they result in an international average mark of 117 year after year.

 

This system of exams was not introduced into the United States until 1992; there are currently a very limited number of testing sites available. In 1998, Carol McClure, artistic director of The Harp School in Dickson, began to use these exams to track the progress of her pre-college students. Students from across the region now participate with more than a dozen teachers bringing students from as far away as Indianapolis and Huntsville; the ABRSM now administers exams for seven to ten days in Nashville twice a year. An examiner comes from the United Kingdom to listen and adjudicate all of these exams.

 

Music students from Lipscomb will sit for exams at two different levels: before the end of their sophomore year, all students will sit for the Grade 8 exams in either their instrument or voice. Once a student passes the exam, he or she will take the Diploma exams before graduating. 

“These exams will ensure that our students meet consistent standards set by the ABRSM in performance, theory, and sightreading,” Reed said. “They will also have to learn how to write about music, how to talk about their music with the examiners and how to learn a piece of music quickly.”

Lipscomb is also offering music scholarships to students who wish to major in music and have already passed the Grade 8 exam. Lipscomb hopes to attract more foreign students to the campus through this program.

 

For more information, contact Reed at 615.279.5809 or through e-mail at jerry.reed [at] lipscomb.edu.