English and Music

English and Music BA

Full-Time Programme

English modules are particularly concerned with the relationships between literature and cultural diversity and change, while music topics will enable you to study a wide variety of areas, including classical, world music, jazz and popular music. Students with innovative ideas and approaches are especially welcome.

Course Content

This degree aims to provide you with a varied, challenging, and enjoyable programme which will engage you in in-depth study of major areas of English literature, whilst developing an informed understanding of current debates in the subject.

It is designed to develop your ability to read texts in increasingly complex and diverse ways. You will explore literature by looking at its structures and forms as well as the varying contexts in which it is produced and read. Students examine the relations between writer, text and reader and interrogate the ways in which contexts shape and affect interpretation of varieties of texts.

There are opportunities for specialisation through a wide range of options which you may select according to your own particular tastes and interests, be they in contemporary poetry, drama, fiction, in literatures of the past or in literatures from cultures remote from our own.

Music study at Brunel is dynamic and diverse with a special focus on 20th century and contemporary music, encompassing western classical, jazz, pop and world music.

Teaching and Learning

Excellent links with leading organisations

The University's proximity to London means we are able to draw on a large team of visiting lecturers who are leaders in their particular field of performance, composition or music business. We are also able to arrange special events, visits and workshops, such as joint projects with the London Sinfonietta, which have resulted in students and professionals premiering their work at such major international music venues as the Queen Elizabeth Hall (on the South Bank) and the Barbican Centre.

Specialists in world music hold workshops (eg in Gamelan, African drumming, Latin American percussion) at the University and off-campus. The University's concert season includes regular student and visiting professional performers of international reputation.

Careers

English is particularly good at developing the transferable personal skills that employers prize in graduates. This degree emphasises imagination, independence of thought and intellectual flexibility. We are concerned both with your acquisition of knowledge and analytical skills and with your ability to manage your own learning and develop your personal and collaborative communication skills.

A high proportion of our Music graduates have either progressed to postgraduate study at a university or conservatoire or have entered the music profession as performers, composers, teachers and technicians. Others have entered arts administration, publishing, the media and management.

Entry Requirements:

• GCE A and AS-level Tariff points typically from 3 A-levels together with either 1 AS-level or Extended Project Qualification (typical offer BBC, including Grade B in English and C in Music, plus a C in either an AS or EPQ). General Studies/Critical Thinking may be accepted.
• Irish Tariff points from 5 subjects.
• Scottish Tariff points from 3 Advanced Highers plus 1 Higher.
• Advanced Diploma Tariff points in Creative and Media, including A-level English for Additional and Specialist Learning. Extended project in a related subject preferred.
• BTEC ND DDM in a related subject.
• IB Diploma 32 points.

For all of the above, 5 GCSEs or equivalent at Grade C or above are also required, to include English.