Master of Music

Normally a first or 2.1 honours degree, with music being a prominent part. Approved equivalent qualifications or experience will be considered, particularly in the case of overseas students and candidates with less conventional educational backgrounds.

English language requirements

IELTS minimum overall: 6.5

IELTS minimum by component: 6.0

All fees are subject to increase or review for subsequent academic years. Please note that not all visa routes permit part-time study and overseas students entering the UK on a Tier 4 visa will not be permitted to study on a part-time basis.

Funding

Funded Postgraduate Opportunities

As part of the AHRC Block Grant Partnership Scheme between the Universities of Oxford Brookes, Hertfordshire and Surrey, we are pleased to invite applications to study at the University of Surrey for scholarships covering both fees and stipend.  Awards are available in the following subject areas.  

Professional Preparation Masters
One year fully funded studentships (full-time) in the following subject areas at University of Surrey: Music
Including pathways in

• Composition
• Performance
• Creative Practice
• Conducting

The deadline for applications is 19 April 2013
 
Applicants must have applied for a place on and hold an offer of admission to the MMus Programme. Normal AHRC eligibility criteria apply.

If you have any queries about this application process, please contact Charmian Hearne, Research Student Administrator, Oxford Brookes University, email: chearne@brookes.ac.uk

Further information

Pathways

The MMus offers the following specialist pathways:

• Composition
• Performance
• Conducting
• Creative Practice
• Musicology

The Composition pathway is designed to develop your individual compositional style and technique through tutorial guidance and opportunities for performances, workshops and recordings in the Department. Various stylistic and generic strands can be taken up either individually or in combination, including concert music, popular music, jazz, music for screen and multimedia, and computer sound design.

The Performance pathway enables you to develop professional expertise on your instrument/voice, within the context of the range of departmental opportunities for performance. You will be tutored and assessed on one instrument (or voice) by visiting professionals of national and international standing in their fields who will guide you in consolidating and developing your technique, repertoire knowledge and interpretative insight.

The Conducting pathway is only available part-time and is designed to develop conducting techniques to a professional level and to enhance the understanding of relevant theoretical principles. You will attend conducting classes (score analysis and preparation, rehearsal techniques, gestural techniques, critical analysis of recordings, and so on) and contribute to rehearsals with the Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, ensembles and Chamber Choir.

The Creative Practice pathway is designed for creative musicians who cannot easily separate performance and composition in their work, for example, musicians working in improvised musics, singer-songwriters, those interested in live electronics, and so on. Teaching and study progress from closely taught modules designed to secure and extend technique to more autonomous project-based learning opportunities. Your final portfolio will likely feature a combination of live performance and composition.

The Musicology pathway is structured in order to accommodate a flexible approach that reflects developing staff research interests, students’ own specialisations and the increasingly polyglot nature of the discipline. Art and popular musics are both catered for within the pathway, drawing on the expertise of staff across these areas. A dissertation of either 60 or 90 credits may be offered.

Your choice of pathway will be reflected in the title of your final award, for example Master of Music (Composition).

Compulsory Modules

Research Training for Practitioners A and B

The first of these modules introduces methodology relevant to understanding and undertaking practice as research, ensuring, as part of this process, that students’ bibliographic and writing skills are developed and strengthened. Bringing together all students on practice-based pathways, a context is provided that allows for the exchange and cross-fertilisation of ideas and experiences. By incorporating the diverse skills of the module cohort, the second module is based around a collaborative practical project, developed and performed as a means of developing critical insight into the nature of practice-based research methods.

Research Training A and B (Musicology pathway only)

The Research Training modules (one in each semester) seek to provide you with the skills necessary to undertake master’s level musicological work, so that by the end of the module you will be able to summarise accurately and analyse critically the strengths and weaknesses of musicological debates, identify appropriate methodologies for particular issues, identify what constitutes effective musicological writing and show an understanding of what constitutes musicological evidence.

Composition A and B and Composition Folio

The Composition modules build from exercise-based and small ensemble work through to autonomously produced portfolios. There are no stylistic or generic restrictions on the programme and staff expertise caters for a variety of approaches to the discipline, ranging from score-based instrumental music, through improvisation, popular and jazz compositions, to works involving electronics. The music you produce may be for the concert hall or a multimedia environment such as film and TV.

Performance A and B and Advanced Performance.

All students taking Performance modules receive individual tuition from one of our highly experienced team of tutors, all of whom are also professional performers. The intention of the modules is to help you develop your technical skills, musicianship and performance experience to the point where you can perform with assurance in any context and across a wide variety of styles.

Conducting A and B and Advanced Conducting

You will learn essential skills of score preparation and develop technical and gestural skills to enable you to work with confidence when rehearsing and performing with a range of ensembles. You may anticipate contributing to rehearsals of and performing with some of the University ensembles such as Choir, Orchestra or Chamber Choir, as well as contributing to the wide range of student-led ensembles. Conducting tuition is given by our Director of Conducting, Russell Keable.

Creative Practice A and B and Creative Practice Folio

The first of these modules introduces the theory and practice of free improvisation (both acoustic and digital) as a means of enhancing and developing creative practice. It explores key repertoire and history, theories concerning musical creativity and improvisation, and the practical application of group and solo improvisation. The second module is practice-led and facilitates work that hybridises across traditional divisions of practice and realisation. A portfolio of work is developed that may include any combination of creative practice including, for example, composition, performance, improvisation, musical arrangement, studio and live-electronic performance or mixed/multimedia production. Such work is further developed in the Creative Practice Folio.

Readings in Musicology A and B (Musicology pathway only)

While a key aim of master’s-level study is to enhance your understanding of music, such an aim is strengthened by developing your understanding of the understanding of music. That understanding is found in a variety of areas of music discourse. The purpose of these two modules is to help you orient yourself within this discourse, exploring your own understanding of music within this context and, in all likelihood, changing it. Most of the time will be spent reading, discussing and critiquing a range of (largely academic) contemporary writing on a range of musics – jazz, classical, popular, film music, and so on.

Case Studies A and B (Musicology pathway only)

These modules allow you to develop, prepare and present a case study in musicology in a small group (typically of two or three students). You will develop your skills in musicology (analytical, historical, critical, theoretical) and develop your intellectual awareness of how to select and apply musicological methods. You will present your findings orally as a group and submit an accompanying abstract and bibliography.

Dissertation (Musicology pathway only)

This module affords you the opportunity to build on the knowledge and skills acquired in Research Training, Readings in Musicology, and Case Studies in researching, planning and executing an extended piece of writing. The length of the dissertation varies according to the credit weighing (60 or 90 credits). You will be assigned a supervisor with research interests relevant to your chosen topic.

Optional Modules

Composition A and B*

(Optional for students on Performance or Conducting pathways.)

Conducting A and B*

(Optional for students on Composition or Performance pathways.)

Orchestral Management 1 and 2

While UK orchestras lead the world, there is a lack of coherent orchestral management training and professional development in the UK. Music at Surrey has long-established relationships with several symphony orchestras, especially those based in London; in association with the Association of British Orchestras, we have developed two new, innovative modules in orchestral management. You will gain insight and understanding of the major factors and key issues governing orchestral management and development through a taught module with input from managers and practitioners associated with the UK’s leading orchestras, and by a module of situated study with an orchestra allowing you to observe, shadow, interview and engage in professional dialogue with orchestral managers, administrators and players. You will also be introduced to Action Learning facilitation and be part of an Action Learning set.

Performance A and B*

(Optional for students on Composition or Conducting pathways.)

Screen Music Studies

This module explores the latest issues in the history, aesthetics and techniques of scoring the moving image. Challenging established frameworks, it looks at diegetics, narrative, temporality, ‘visual music’, surrealism, the avant garde, pre-existent music, Hollywood and non-Hollywood practice, and genre studies, as well as giving an opportunity to score a film/TV excerpt.

Studio Techniques

The purpose of this module is to enable you to develop and refine skills in recording and manipulating acoustic sound using a ‘home studio’ set-up. The module facilitates a wide range of approaches including producing a seamlessly edited recording, assembling separately recorded tracks and the creative use of sampling, synthesis and other computer audio techniques. The possible applications of this module range from producing a demo CD/showreel of performances to studio-based instrumental compositions and entirely electro-acoustic works.

Level 3 Undergraduate Modules

Up to two modules may be chosen from the final-year undergraduate programmes in Music and Creative Music Technology, including African American Music, 19th Century Aesthetics, Pluralism in Western Music, Rock Track Poetics and Jazz Studies 2. The MMus Programme Director should be consulted for confirmation of the modules on offer in any given year.

*Enrolment on these modules is subject to a satisfactory audition or portfolio of work.