The Viva the Candidate Didn't Prepare For
A composition candidate has submitted a 7-minute work for wind quintet and a portfolio of drafts. In the viva, the panel asks: 'Why did you choose an ABA form here?' The candidate answers that ABA is 'a standard classical form and it suits the ensemble'. Asked to say what the B section does that the A section cannot, the candidate repeats that it 'provides contrast'. Asked about a specific harmonic choice at bar 62, the candidate says it 'sounded right'. The panel then asks what the candidate would change if given another month. The candidate says 'nothing, I'm happy with it'. The portfolio shows three drafts in which the B section was substantially rewritten twice.
1. Assess the candidate's viva performance and identify what the panel is actually testing.
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The candidate is answering questions about categories (ABA, contrast, standard form) rather than about this piece. The panel's follow-ups are designed to test whether the candidate has reflective knowledge of their own compositional decisions - the central viva criterion - and the answers show a gap between what the portfolio reveals and what the candidate can articulate.
What the panel is testing:
- Intentionality. 'Why ABA?' is not a request for a definition; it asks whether the form was chosen for reasons specific to the material. 'It's standard' answers a different question.
- Functional understanding. 'What does B do that A cannot?' tests whether the candidate understands contrast as a job - a change of harmonic field, texture, register, or rhythmic character - rather than a label.
- Ability to justify detail. 'It sounded right' at bar 62 is an intuition, not a rationale. The panel will accept intuition if the candidate can then explain what the chord does (e.g. it delays a resolution, it reinterprets a motive, it creates a pivot).
- Critical distance. 'Nothing I'd change' is the weakest possible answer, and it is contradicted by the portfolio, which shows the B section rewritten twice.
The pattern is that the candidate can do but cannot yet account for what they did. That is exactly the deficit the viva exists to detect.
2. The candidate later says the panel was 'trying to trick me'. How should the teacher reframe this, and what preparation would fix it?
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Reframing. The panel was not tricking the candidate; it was asking the same question at increasing levels of specificity. 'Why ABA?' → 'What does B do?' → 'Why this chord?' is a ladder, not a trap. The candidate experienced it as adversarial because each rung exposed that the previous answer was a label rather than a reason. The teacher should make this pattern explicit so the candidate recognises the ladder next time.
Preparation that would fix it:
- Decision log. For each major choice (form, instrumentation, harmonic language, ending), write three sentences: what I chose, what I rejected, why. The portfolio already contains the evidence - the two rewrites of B - but the candidate never converted it into language.
- The 'what does it do' drill. For any feature, practise answering in terms of function: what it changes, what it prepares, what it denies.
- Rehearse the counterfactual. 'What would you change?' should have a prepared, genuine answer. The portfolio supplies one: the B section was rewritten twice, so the candidate can say what the final version solved that the earlier ones did not.
- Score-guided viva practice. The candidate should be able to point to bar 62 and explain the chord's role in context, not just its sound.
The general lesson: the viva rewards candidates who can give an account of their process, and the portfolio is the evidence base for that account. A candidate who says 'nothing I'd change' while holding a portfolio of revisions has not read their own evidence.