Motivation letter

When I was a kid I always felt a deep curiosity for music. I attribute this to the fact that in in my
family there have been many musicians for a long time, even though none of them had ever been
professionally trained. So when I was 9 years old I decided by myself to learn piano and to sing in
my city’s children choir.

It was then, that little by little I became to discover everything that music had to offer to me and I
decided to exploit whatever my music teachers could give me. So, whatever opportunity I had to
learn something about music there, I took it. I studied Piano, I sang in the choir and became a
soloist for a long time, when I was told if I wanted to learn clarinet and become part of the music
school’s band I told myself it would be really interesting. Then the clarinet became one of my
main instruments and while being in the band I had once the opportunity to conduct the whole
band, and that was my first approach to conducting; which helped me define what I wanted to do
with music.

Later, when I turned 18 I was accepted in Carlos Chávez youth orchestra in the bachelor
programme as a clarinetist, so I moved to Mexico City looking for an education that would allow
me to deepen and strengthen my musical insights. Even from this moment I already knew I
wanted to be a conductor, but it has been really difficult to find a good enough teacher that would
focus in properly teaching me conducting in Mexico. Despise that, I had many different
experiences with many musicians that taught me that the labour of a conductor is to express
coherently a musical idea in a compositional work and to unify the orchestra. Thus, I started to
study composition with the purpose that knowing different compositional resources I would
better understand the composer’s intention when analysing their work and then when conducting
it.

As time has been passing, my path to music has become clearer, and currently I know for sure that
music, particularly conducting is my life calling. Therefore, I want to get an all-round education
that would give me the tools I need to fulfil what I intend to achieve. This is the reason I want to
be accepted in Amsterdam’s Conservatoire: so I can not only polish my technical skills, but also be
in contact with an environment of creativity that will further my own conception of what music is.
I know that in Amsterdam’s Conservatoire I will feel free as an artist to create and innovate
meaningfully.

Fernando Martinez Cueto.