Course description
MMus/PGDip in Music Module overview
Core Module
Research Training: Theory and Methods
This module develops advanced research skills, and introduces research resources and current trends within the music as preparation for presenting a conference-style paper.
Optional modules offered at the PG Diploma stage
Aesthetics
Topics covered by this survey of musical aesthetics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include: organicism, genius, nationalism, realism, the relationship between music and language, symbolism, and modernism.
Analysis
This module develops a working knowledge of the most widely used analytical methodologies, together with the appropriate critical skills and an awareness of analytical and theoretical literature.
Case Studies
A case study may focus on a single work or issue in music.
Classical Studio Production
This module involves practical training in the creative aspects of studio production, working in conjunction with recording engineers from the Department's Tonmeister programme.
Composition
This module develops individual compositional style through tutorial guidance and opportunities for performances and recordings. Various stylistic and generic strands can be taken up including concert music, popular music, jazz, music for screen and multimedia, and computer sound design.
Conducting
This module develops conducting techniques to a professional level and enhances the understanding of relevant theoretical principles.
Creative Practice
This module is designed for creative musicians whose practice combines elements of performance and composition. Disciplines include improvisation, studio and live electronic production, mixed/multi media production, jazz, and popular music practice.
Critical Musicology
This module covers recent approaches to music as a cultural practice. Rejecting the idea of art as an autonomous sphere of activity, musicologists have recently developed ways of addressing issues around power, identity and subjectivity.
Criticism and Reviewing
This module develops critical responses to qualities of performance, a style of concise writing which can be applied quickly to the task of concert criticism, skills of comparative evaluation of recorded performances, and the ability to plan and participate in the audio recording of a record review.
Cultural Theory and Music
This module explores cultural theory models dominant in the study of popular music and popular music cultures. It engages critically with the dominant theoretical models used in contemporary popular musicology.
Performance
This module develops professional expertise on one instrument (or voice). Students are tutored and assessed by visiting professionals of international standing in their fields.
Popular Musicology
This module explores recent developments in academic discussion of popular music. It develops strategies to relate contemporary debates in musicology through the medium of popular music.
Screen Music Studies
This module addresses a range of historical, theoretical and aesthetic aspects of cinema and TV media and their musics, including the role of music in film form and narrative, screen music and cultural studies, film interpretation, and 'postmodern' approaches to scoring the moving image.
Typical entry requirements
Applicants should normally have a first degree of at least an Upper Second standard, with music usually being a prominent part of the degree. Approved equivalent qualifications or experience will be considered, particularly in the case of overseas students and candidates with less conventional educational backgrounds.
Programme length
12 months full-time, 24 months part-time
