Hi I am preparing for my FRSM Written Submission. Those who have written it before, care to give some advise ?

Thanks.

I wrote mine for my exam and it took several months of solid research. I would give myself a lot of time for that before I enter the exam. Also, I picked my programme partly based on how much and how well I can write about the pieces. If you want specific opinion about a particular Written Submission you are preparing, you can contact me privately.

You should contact the ABRSM syllabus principal to discuss your choice of dissertation topic. He was very helpful to me and ensured that I remained within the rubric of the syllabus concerning that the topic had a firm focus on issues of performance. My written submission title was "Approaching historically informed performance of German Baroque organ works".

Once you have agreed a topic with him, you should read widely and ensure you have a large body of reference material from which to draw your discussion and argument. I think my references page for FRSM ran into two sheets of A4 - which is quite a lot for about 5000 words. You should also seek permission where necessary from music publishers to include score examples in your submission. This was easily obtained via email.

Good luck!

Are you preparing for the performers or teachers FRSM? The requirements - especially with regards to length - are different. For the teachers FRSM the written submission needs to be around 11,000 words for the performers around 4,500 words.

I'm doing FRSM Performance in Piano. 4500 words is quite a jump from LRSM's 1800 words !! There isn't any 'sample paragraphs' of FRSM written submission in the syllabus handbook. It only contains programme notes sampler for Dip & LRSM, so I'm quite lost right now !!

Not very confident in the recital section too. I've got 60 for LRSM (2007), is that good enough to do FRSM?





Thanks. I thought I'm supposed to write on the pieces I'm gonna perform ?

If you read the syllabus carefully you will see that the Written Submission certainly isn't 4500 words of super-detailed programme notes.

Also, at this level, you should not need any sample paragraphs to set you off in the right direction - you should be capable of writing about music in postgraduate style. That, I believe, is the level you should be aiming at for the Written Submission.

Nope I don't have the book but am gonna borrow from the library soon. Thanks for the recommendation !