This study aims to examine the music performance anxiety of music teacher candidates through various variables, to determine whether there is a significant relationship between music performance anxiety and social anxiety, to determine the strategies they use to cope with this anxiety, and to make suggestions. The universe of the study consists of undergraduate students studying at the Faculty of Education, Department of Fine Arts Education, Department of Music Education, and the sample of the study consists of undergraduate students (N=101) from universities selected from six different geographical regions (Marmara, Erzincan, Aksaray,  Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Harran, Karadeniz Teknik). The "Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory" and the "Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale" were used as data collection tools.  A correlation analysis was performed to determine whether the scales showed a normal distribution, and according to the results, various statistical analysis techniques such as ANOVA for parametric results and Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H for non-parametric results were used.  It has been determined that there is a significant relationship between performance anxiety and social anxiety of music teacher candidates. However, no significant difference was found between music performance anxiety and variables of gender, grade, graduated high school, type of instrument, and academic grade point average. To cope with music performance anxiety, 38% of the music teacher candidates do breathing exercises before the performance, 25% pray before the performance, 13% consume energy drinks or alcohol before the performance, 9% use methods such as yoga/meditation before the performance, 7% used sedatives before the performance, 7% refuse to perform, 1% benefited from approaches such as Alexander Feldenkrais, and 1% applied to various therapy methods through a psychologist before the performance. At the end of the study, various recommendations are given to cope with performance anxiety.

Performance anxiety, social anxiety, music teacher candidates