What happens if an accompanist makes a mistake or, worse, breaks down in an instrumental or singing exam? Do you lose marks, or is the examiner sympathetic? Has this ever happened to anyone? If so, how did it affect the marks.

I can't answer the question specifically, but I would imagine that if a soloist was able to continue well and compensate for a poor accompaniment, that this could only be in the soloist's favour. I once lost control of my right hand accompanying at a festival, but was assured by all at the time that this did not affect the judgement. However, it still haunts me and I haven't done it since! I would hate to be the one to be blamed - rightly or wrongly - for a lower than expected mark.

Are there any examiners out there who could shed more light on this?

I accompany my pupils in exams and festivals all the time, and no, it doesn't matter in the slightest if you make mistakes, as long as you are competent enough not to let it throw you and thus endanger the soloist's performance.

I've played some frightfully difficult accompaniments for the faster pieces at higher grades for my recorder pupils, in which quite honestly the best that can be said of my contribution is that it is rhythmical and keeps going - and yet they have come out with excellent marks for those pieces. Think of it as providing a framework for them to hang their piece on!

Regarding accidents, I still remember a ghastly incident at a music festival in clear detail from nearly 20 years ago, where I was accompanying a fairly brisk piece and inadvertently turned over two pages by mistake - and THEN while one-handedly trying to turn it back succeeded in throwing the book on the floor, and had to grovel for it under the piano. The child I was accompanying carried on playing (as per my usual 'carry on whatever happens' instructions) and I finally got back in about half-a-page later. He got First Prize, by the way!

I was told that if the accompanist make a mistake and the soloist carried on well without letting the examiner know( or at least if it's not sticking out), then the soloist get the extra credit of have "good communication and contact" with his/her soloist.

I can't stop laughing! *giggles*
Usually I play in memory and this kind of incidents doesn't happen on me.

Anyway,
of course accompanists' mistakes do not matter.
Though mistakes will protray the accompanist in a negative light,
which I'm sure nobody wants to feel undermined.
In conclusion,
the lesson to learn is:
Be very prepared before you perform or take an exam.
and eat a banana. ;-}

Accompanists don't always get enough time to learn their part from memory.

My accompanist for my grade 8 recorder, who had already acompanied six other exams that afternoon, had a complete mental blank about one of the tempo changes in one of my pieces (which changed tempo, pulse and key several times). I battled on, knowing he wasn't with me, but he stopped and said 'I'm sorry, but I'm completely lost'. We restarted, but he was still playing at half-tempo. We ended up with me conducting a bar for nothing to bring him in at the right speed.

The exam report said something along the lines of 'You recovered well from the breakdown' and I received 27 for the piece. I lost a mark at most.

Although I don't think that a bad accompaniment will reduce the marks a soloist gets, I am acutely aware that if I play badly or make lots of mistakes it may affect the performance of the soloist. This results in me being probably just as nervous as the soloist.

My worst experience in an exam was when I was accompanying a saxophonist (can't remember what grade, but one of the higher ones). He was playing an ultra modern piece and the piano part had so many accidentals and weird chords in it that I'd not been able to get the hang of it properly. The examiner probably hadn't heard it before either, and he came and stood right behind me to read the music as I was playing it!!

My worst of all time accompanying disaster was when I fell off the piano stool in the middle of accompanying a violinist. She just carried on and said afterwards that she'd been wondering why the audience had started laughing in the middle of the piece!!!!

I shall be accompanying a grade 8 recorder exam in a couple of months - pieces are not difficult for the piano though, otherwise I'd probably have turned it down, as I did when the same person asked if I'd accompany his ATCL recital flute exam - one of the pieces seemed really hard when I looked at it.

Hi there

I remember during my Solo (singing) exam recital as part of my finals at university my accompanist actually stopped playing during a beautiful Purcell song. I was mortified. I continued singing - what else could I do?!

The examiner, who also happened to be my singing teacher at the time, said that if my accompanist hadn't broken down halfway through then I would have got 60 (a 2.1) for that module, but because she went wrong I only got 59 (high 2.2).

Mrs M (soon to be Miss Z!)

The official line from the AB is that the accompanist's playing will not effect the marks of the soloist. This is true, of course, a few fluffs here and there really don't matter. As people have said however, although an accompanist cannot directly cause the candidate to lose marks, they can indirectly do so by distracting the performer. If the accompanist doesn't manage to keep going or play sufficiently well to put the candidate at ease then the candidate is not likely play as well. Ultimately though it is the performance given by the soloist that is given the marks; the job of the accompanist is to give them the best chance to give the best possible performance .

I think a lesson can be learned here....

It's really important to have lots of rehearsals with your accompanist!

When I was growing up, I was very lucky because my mum always accompanied me and she's an excellent pianist. I had my accompanist with me throughout all my practice sessions!

From talking to examiners I gather that some accompanists are truly dreadful - even to the extent of just playing one hand of the accompaniment beacuse that is all they can manage, or sketching in some chords. But unless something really dreadful happens to the accompaniment the examiners are concentrating so hard on the soloist that they claim they're not really hearing the accompaniment at all. Which I keep telling myself when I'm accompanying my pupils - I'm sure I get more nervous than they do!

My son will be taking his very first music exam next month - Grade 3 trumpet, and the accompanist will be one of two teachers at the school. I have no doubt at all that they will be far more nervous than him.

My only worry is that, between pieces, he doesn't ask the examiner if he knows what the latest football/cricket scores are!

What it is to be young and not frightened of anything!

Steve

This makes me feel better. I've never been that bad, often working really hard to get to know the accompaniment well. What's nice is that I 've always been thanked by the examiner before I leave the room, and occasionally they make a comment too about the accompaniments of some pieces, specially when they're fiendish.

Had a phone call tonight - message left on answerphone - please would I be available to accompany a grade 5 saxophone exam - fine so far. Then she went on to say that she'd tried several other people and she was now desperate!! Huh. So I'm the last resort am I?

Ah, but then you'll be much better appreciated....

Ah .. but the converse is also true - a good accompanist can rescue you too!

I have just started accompaning some of my friends for their singing competitions. One girl was so nervous that she simply didn't start singing at all so I played the introduction again pretending it was a repeat ( luckily it wasn't too long) - again she didn't start so I blended it in again for a third time and this time I gave an enormous nod and even sang the first few words to start her off.

This was despite several sessions beforehand practising it - she said afterwards she went totally blank

She didn't win but I got several people asking for my phone number to book me!!!

Yes, except, when I rang her back, and started to make an arrangement about a rehearsal with her son - who goes to the school I teach in, she was still talking about getting photocopies for me, and she'd carry on asking at the music centre if there was anyone who would do it!!!!!!! I think she'd got into a panic about it and hadn't really taken in that I would do it! We got there in the end though!

I always make sure the soloist can see my face, and I make a lot of use of nodding to help them with their entries - I look like one of those nodding dogs sometimes! Raised eyebrows and a quick glance will always help them too, to indicate theres an entry coming up - these are things I work out with them, if they need it, during the rehearsal.

I must admit, speaking as a soloist - there is no doubt that it is much easier to play well if you have a good accompanist. I feel very lucky that my teacher is not only good at teaching, he can also give my performance a "lift" by how he plays the keyboard - and that he's able to accompany me for my next exam. If a soloist feels s/he is supporting the accompaniment, s/he will not be able to concentrate so well on the solo part. Daisy Duck's comment on rehearsal is very important - I imagine there must be a few candidates out there who don't organise enough rehearsal time with their accompanists.

One of the most helpful things my accompanist does for me is to give me a big encouraging smile before we start. Sounds like such a small thing but it really helps!!

And at the end - however badly the soloist has played, a "well done" will boost their morale to do the rest of the exam well.

Yes, Anacrusis, I totally agree. I get on so, so well with my regular accompanist, we just seem to have a certain 'something' that just makes both of us at great ease when we're playing together.

In my flute exam my teacher was accompanying me and she went to turn a page, the music feel off the piano and she fell off the chair trying to pick it up. However i managed to carry on, and still got a high mark!! It just goes to show that if you can carry on despite whatever is going on around you then you'll get credit for it.

Just want to share my recent accompaniment experience whcih left me feeling bad for a day: I recently accompanied a Violinist for her LRSM, and while i remembered to fold all corners of the pages i needed to turn, I forgot to bend the music book the opposite way (so as to prevent the pages from flipping back). In the end the situation was especially bad during the last two pages as the pages kept flipping back to the front and i was pretty busy flipping back that i missed some parts of the left hand. Later I thought about it and realized I could have easily played the last two pages from memory esp since it was technically difficult and in the first place u wouldn't be staring at the score. The violinist continued playing but she may have been distracted by the sound of me flipping back the pages.

Morale of the story? To know ur scorebook well (in terms of the book and music)...

We need the examiner or adjudicator to be alert to what has happened when we accompanists muck-up. Unless this alertness exists the candidate is in danger of being penalised. This happens rarely, but it can happen, so it is up to us to make sure the marker is aware of what happened.

A wonderful example happened in a festival a few years ago. I had played all day and was seen as a 'safe pair of hands', trusted to do a good job for the competitiors.

We accompanists are all familiar with the 'am I playing in the same key as this violinist?' scenario. On one occasion this happened when I was playing with a youngster whose playing I knew to be good. A quick check back revealed that I should have been playing in E, not Eb - only for the first three bars but the sound was excrutiating.

At the end of the performance I 'fessed up to the audience and ordered a fresh round of applause to the child for keeping going. I noticed a start of alarm from the adjudicator, a grab for a blank comments sheet and a few seconds hasty scribbling. I found out afterwards that he had assumed the child to be at fault, and needed to rewrite the sheet leaving off his comments about the early bars. Marks needed adding as well, so the child went from 3rd to first place

Steve

Yes!

Thats great

I accompanied my daughter last week for a festival, but not the easiest of circumstances. The layout of the room meant it was impossible to see her and I had the wonderful good fortune of playing on a Steinway D. However, the Steinway isn't very happy about being used for such meagre work as accompanying, it likes to be centre of attention and the poor little 1/4 sized baby cellos didn't stand a chance against it, which meant balancing sound was very difficult as however quiet I played I still couldn't hear her.

We must have done something right though as we had a comment about listening to each other well and she got the silver medal.

Yes, lid down, where possible, too!
At home we even have to do that with the harpsichord, if I'm playing my tenor recorder, which is very soft.

If I'm playing lots of dfferent pieces in different keys, eventually I get "key-signature blindness". Having changed key so many times I can't "tune in" to the current key, and find myself playing in, for example, E instead of Eb and wondering why it sounds so awful!!

I was page turning for bobifier's mum in a school concert last year. She was accompanying a choir, and I turned the page, and somehow managed to pull the music off the stand and onto her knee. She was unsure of whether to scream or burst out laughing. She holds it against me even now!

I'd like to think that the accompaniment wouldn't be directly taken into account when marking an exam, but it's definitely true that an accompanist can really affect how a performance goes, in terms of distracting a solost, or giving them a boost. I do lots of accompanying, so I probably woudl say that

One thing I would say though: I really wish many soloists would take this into account! They seem to think that one very brief run-through is sufficient, often with the music provided with very short notice

Obviously, you can bash through it in that situation, but if they only managed to be a bit prepared, they'd probably end up with a better result!

But then, maybe I'm biased...

As a pianist, I have obviously never had to have an accompanist for exams, nor have I been asked to accompany (am I missing something?). But for my Grade 1 challenge on the recorder, I do need someone to accompany and I have chosen a (ver experienced) child of 11. The music is very easy and he can cope really well with that so I'm really hoping that I dont let him down

you must both be getting tired of standing in that same position all this time ...

oh my, that was bad!

yeah - sorry. It's late, and been quite a good evening ...

I've got my piano teacher accompanying me for my grade 1 challenge.

I've used four different accompanists for the exams I've done so far. The one that gave me the biggest mishap was the chap who accompanied my Grade 8 singing. In my second song he managed to turn over two pages at once. Unfortunately the music modulated at the second page turn, so we were briefly in conflicting keys before he realised he was adrift and improvised a route back to where I was.

Other than that, they've all been very supportive and tremendously helpful.

I think it's also important for an accompanist to be organised and have an aura of calmness about them. My daughter has an excellent accompanist when she does violin exams and they have a couple of quite long rehearsals beforehand so that they feel everything is in place. My daughter is even now asking for her to accompany her singing exams because the accompanist she had for her singing exam last year arrived really late - technically after the exam should have started!

I accompany all my pupils unless I know that I will not bea able to learn the part in time, when my accompanist has, for a fee, offered his services, and I know he is a far better pianist than me. However, my pupils are used to the way I play, and find that reassuring.

I find it nerve wracking, but will continue to do it as, if a familiar face helps them in the exam, then I'd better learn the piano parts.

I am an excellent sight reader but not sight player at the piano. When I accompany pupils I spend many hours working at the accomps until they are perfect, and many more hours with the pupils until we perform well together. I have a pupil working for his diplcm at the moment and have put aside two hours today to look at a new piece before his lesson on it tomorrow. It is new for both of us. By December it will be a competent performance, and I will be note perfect. If I were not able to play it I would worry about my ability to teach the piano! I often make use of photocopies to avoid page turns and will probably have a page turner in his exam. The piece in question is 19 pages long (Fulton, Scottish Suite) and I will not risk messing up the accomp. by playing poorly or missing page turns.

My feelings exactly! Even learning Warlock's Sleep, which is not long but intricate and very involved with the voice, if I could not learn it to a standard i find acceptable for my student's exam, what am i doing teaching piano. Even beginner's piano through to Grade 6!

Thanks for your replies, everyone. Are you actually saying that a student will not be able to do the job? It would be lovely to have a professional accompanist to hand, but failing that, I think it will be excellent for my pupil to have the experience of accompanying instead of being accompanied. I also think he is sensible and unflustered enough... he will probably be able to calm me down.

I think it will be excellent experience for your student. He's lucky to have the opportunity to start learning that set of skills so early. I may have mentioned before that I once heard a 9-year-old play a very musical and responsive accompaniment to her older sister in a concert. I hope you will both enjoy playing your little private concert for the examiner.