1. Definitions


  1. Chair: is in charge of the ways of the jury and formulates the jury’s conclusions. The chair is also the first public spokesperson of the jury. The chair only has substitutive suffrage, which is to say that he or she only votes in case one or more jury members have to abstain because of conflicting interests.
  2. Members of the jury: together carry the responsibility of assessing the participants of the competition, by the procedures explained below. The members contribute equally to the conclusions of the jury, except in cases specified below.
  3. Artistic director: is a member of the jury on behalf of his or her status as director. The director attends all meetings of the jury. The director has suffrage equally to any other jury member.
  4. Secretary of the jury: can be appointed optionally by the chair, and is responsible for recording the proceedings of the jury meetings. On behalf of his or her position, the secretary does not contribute to the conclusions of the jury.
  5. Combination of positions:
    • The position of secretary may be combined with any of the other positions.
    • The position of chair may be combined with a regular position of member of the jury. In this case, the substitutive suffrage as explained below shall not be effectuated.

2. General conditions: discreteness and neutrality


  1. Meetings of the jury are secret. Those attending the meetings shall take care that nothing of the proceedings is revealed to others.
  2. Outside the jury meetings, jury members exercise secrecy concerning their opinions as to the competition participants and their performances.
  3. As to safeguard secrecy, the chair shall see that all written material generated by the jury shall be collected and destroyed immediately after the competition, preferably by the secretary.
  4. A member of the jury shall abstain from voting when he or she has a close relationship to a participant. This includes cases when the participant is:
    • a student,
    • a close friend,
    • a relative,
    • or any other bias-inducing relation

    of his or hers. This also applies to those students that are not officially registered as a student of the jury member, but the relationship with whom must nonetheless be seen as a relationship of teacher-and-pupil. In case of doubt, abstinence prevails.

  5. Members of the jury shall inform the chair on these relationships in advance of the competition.
  6. In case of abstinence, the chair will stand in for the member. In case the chair replaces more than one jury member, his or her vote will nevertheless have single weight, equal to the votes of any other jury member.
  7. It is likely that the number of voting jury members will be different between participants. In such cases, it will be granted arithmetically that such differences do not bear on the outcomes.

3. Order of the meetings


  1. The chair is in charge of the jury meetings. He or she sees that grading, voting and counting of votes and grades takes place in well order.
  2. The members of the jury will remain silent, until the chair formally opens the discussion, following the guidelines under ‘procedure of the meetings’ and ‘assessment and criteria’.
  3. After the discussion, the chair formulates the jury’s conclusions.
  4. After each round, the chair announces the results in public. The chair is allowed to delegate this task to others, for example in case a celebrity is invited to award the final prizes.

4. Procedure of the meetings


  1. At the start of each meeting, the chair will take care that jury members have sufficient time in silence to complete the forms, insofar as they haven’t done so during the performances.
  2. As to facilitate the assessment, jury members will be handed out assessment forms that will help them grading the duos. The secretary of the jury will explain the forms and their use at the beginning of the competition. Part of the form is intended for note-taking, and not compulsory to use. Part of the form will be intended for a concluding grade, which is compulsory to fill out.
  3. As explained above, all members of the jury will first fill out the forms (at least the compulsory part), and first then start discussing.
  4. The numerical evaluation (see below under ‘Assessment and criteria’) will provide the starting point for the discussion.
  5. The chair decides which duos are discussed in-depth and which are not. Obviously high and obviously low scores may be exempted from discussion in case of time pressure.
  6. Jury members are not allowed to change the grades in the course of the discussion. However, the discussion may conclude to different duos being forwarded to the next round than what would follow straightforwardly from the numbers. (That is, there may be convincing arguments why a lower score should win over a higher score.)
  7. The vote of the chair will tip the balance in the following cases:
    • One or more jury members do not accept the conclusion of the majority of the jury. (“Doubtful cases”)
    • Two or more duos either gain the same number of points, or gain numbers of points that are too close to call, to be decided by the jury. (“Ex aequo”)

5. Assessment and criteria


  1. Members of the jury shall only take account of the performance of duos in the present round. Achievements of earlier rounds may not be taken into account, neither positively nor negatively. (Thus, participants will have the opportunity to develop in the course of the competition, while still the absolute level of the performance is being assessed, not the progress of the duo.)
  2. The votes of the jury members are equal in weight.
  3. The chair will have his or her own set of forms, to be filled in (at least) in case a member needs to be substituted. In other words, the sets of forms are personal, and at no point shall anyone complete a form outside her or his own set.
  4. For the assessment, the capacity of the duo is of utmost importance. Only in second instance, the individual capacities can be taken into account, if an imbalance in quality between the pianist and vocalist is clearly visible.
  5. The jury is obliged to award the first, second and third prizes, as well as the other prizes.

6. First round (28 duos, 12 to proceed)


  1. The jury members will fill out the forms for each duo, resulting in a concluding grade ranging between 1 (poor) and 4 (brilliant). Only integer grades will be given (i.e. 3.5 is not a valid grade).
  2. The twelve duos with the highest scores will proceed to the second round, unless the discussion concludes differently.
  3. The jury may decide to admit any other number of duos but not more than twelve to the second round. This requires a unanimous decision including the chair and the artistic director. (This should not be considered a regular possibility, but rather a rare exception. It may be used, for example, in case the field is quite clearly divided in 10 obviously strong and 18 obviously poor duos.)

7. Second round (12 duos, 6 to proceed)


  1. The jury members will fill out the forms for each duo, resulting in a concluding grade ranging between 1 (poor) and 4 (brilliant). Only integer grades will be given (i.e. 3.5 is not a valid grade).
  2. In the second round, the jury will select six duos for the final.
  3. In the second round, the jury may not depart from the number of six duos to be admitted to the finals.
  4. If two or more duos end equally on the sixth position, or if it is otherwise impossible to decide on numerical grounds, a whole reprise of the voting procedure will be conducted. If the reprise ends again in a deadlock, the chair is to conclude the discussion.

8. Finals


  1. Each member writes down the duo that he or she considered entitled to the first prize, the second prize and the third prize, by the numbers 1, 2 and three, respectively. The duo with the lowest number of points will win the first prize, etc.
  2. In the final, no abstinence will be required from the jury members. Even if there is a close relation, a jury member may nominate a duo. (Abstinence would in this round skew the assessment more than balancing it; it is trusted that jury members will not let themselves be guided by improper motivations.)
  3. If duos finish equally, a short discussion will be conducted, followed by a full reprise of the voting procedure. If this again yields an ex aequo, the chair will decide.

9. Prizes


  1. The jury will award the first, second and third prize.
  2. The jury will award a performance in the national radio program Spiegelzaal, to be recorded live from the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on April 26th. This prize is awarded to the winners of the first prize, unless there are good (mostly practical) reasons to decide differently.
  3. The jury will award the prize of Vrienden van het Lied. The prize is to be awarded to a European duo.
  4. The jury will award the MCN prize for the best performance of the commissioned composition.
  5. The audience will decide upon the audience’s prize. Each visitor may cast one nomination for the prize. The duo with the largest number of nominations will win the prize. The jury has no influence on the prize awarded by the audience.
  6. All duos can be nominated for the audience’s prize, including the duos that have not survived the first or second rounds.
  7. It is possible for one of the first, second or third prize winners to also win one of the other prizes.