Noah's Notes: musings of a 17-year-old musician (no.5)

Conservatories have a reputation for producing great musicians. Were you to dare express any doubts about this, you would not have to wait long until a spout of alumni name-dropping commenced. Whether conservatories produce or merely attract talent is a debate that has gone on since their very inception, without much of a conclusion reached.

The word ‘conservatoire’ really just means music school. Of course, there's not much debate about that, so to avoid using some sort of long moniker, I will more or less be referring to the sorts of places that call themselves a conservatory or conservatoire.

One of their common quasi-stereotypical methods is the emphasis of perfection, both once a student is there and as a requirement to get in. The possible benefits being obvious, I shall address the downsides with a quote from Ludwig van Beethoven; coincidentally (or perhaps not) a man who did not attend a conservatoire: ‘To play a wrong note is nothing; to play without feeling is inexcusable.’ Alfred Cortot and his occasional colleague Pablo Casals – both musical gods of sorts – were relatively prone to wrong notes. Whether auditioners would overlook these shortcomings is impossible to say; whether there are institutions out there who would not is almost a given.