Barlow Endowment Day 2

Let the final judging begin!

On the second day of my internship in the mountains, we all convened together with our 4-6 applications that we felt were the best from our rooms the previous day. After we had all gathered, us, the interns, presented the applicants to the judges. We played a sample of their music for them, similar to what we listened to in the individual rooms, while they took notes. Quietly, we moved onto the next application. We did this for all 20 applications that were brought to the table. After every application had been presented, there was discussion.

Discussion was rather interesting to me. It seemed that the best applications naturally rose to the top of the pack. The was something that distinguished them from all the other applicants. Quickly, all the applications were whittled down to a few. This is when I thought things would get ugly. I thought that one person was going to stick with one application to the very end and never be convinced that someone else was going to win. It started to look that way. We took another listen to the pieces. Listened to some additional things in more depth. This then led to more discussion. Surprisingly, all of the judges came to a consensus  rather fast. "What? That's it? No fighting? No yelling or screaming?"

The judges were very respectful of each other's opinions and rather than fighting, they presented their concerns and arguments and were completely open to what others had to say. It was quite remarkable and amazing.

Shortly after lunch, a winner had been decided for the prize.

After all this, we were given a little break. We then had the task of going through the general and lds applications. This process was much faster as there were fewer applications to sort through.

The general applications are different from the prize applications in a few ways. First of all, there is no set commission money. They can name their composer fee. As much or as little as they want. Second, they don't have to write for a specific ensemble. They can choose anything they want. The purpose of the general commission is to promote new music and to help young and old composers alike to actively create new music. Also, because this is an endowment from Brigham Young University, it has a special category for lds composers.

We chose the final applications, which were to be brought to the table the next morning.