All voice applicants are required to submit a pre-audition screening video by December 1.
First you must apply to DePaul School of Music. After you submit your online application, you may upload your pre-audition recording under the "Portfolio Submission" section at the following website: DePaul Pre-Audition Recording Upload.
Please note the following for your recordings:
- Applicants should use songs to demonstrate different vocal techniques such as vowels that are sustained and supported over longer note values, vocal agility in passages with quick-moving notes, consistency of tone though low, middle, and high portions of the singers range, etc.
- Each song or aria must be recorded in one continuous take, and uploaded as an individual file. Recordings should not be edited or spliced. Selections should be accompanied when appropriate.
- Pre-screen recordings are due by December 1.
Prescreen Requirements - materials due by December 1.
Your pre-screening video must include two songs,
classical in nature, one in English and one in a foreign language.
Live Audition Requirements
We encourage all applicants, if at all possible, to audition in-person.
- Live audition dates are scheduled during the weekends in February. Review list of audition dates by instrument here.
- Recorded video auditions are available by request and must be submitted by February 1 to your Blue Demon Domain (for undergraduates) or your application portal (for graduates/post-masters), in the “edit portfolio" section. To enable the recorded audition submission, contact musicadmissions@depaul.edu.
Graduate vocal audition repertoire
- one selection each in Italian, German, French, and English and
include at least one opera or oratorio aria and one twentieth-century
selection (four selections total).
Recorded Interview Questions (only applicable to those who select a recorded submission to audition)
Please upload a video that is no longer than 2-3 minutes and responds to the below questions:
- What is your musical background?
- Why are you applying to DePaul?
Suggested Composers:
In addition to the vast repertoire of baroque, classical, romantic, and 20th/21st century music written by Bach, Handel, Mozart, and their contemporaries, students are encouraged to include selections from amongst the list of lesser known composers shown here and their contemporaries.
Above all, students are encouraged to perform the repertoire they sing best. This includes what they sing technically best, what they identify with the most, what represents them the most, and those pieces with which they feel they have the most to communicate.
J.S. Bach, Amy Beach, Johannes Brahms, Harry Burleigh, Antonio Caldara, Ernest Chausson, Saunder Choi, Claude Debussy, Gaetano Donizetti, Gabriel Faure, Reynaldo Hahn, George Frideric Handel, Fannie Mendelssohn, W.A. Mozart, Fernando Obradors, Florence Price, Henry Purcell, Maurice Ravel, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss, Roger Quilter, Giuseppe Verdi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Hugo Wolf