B.A. Music

Over the first two years of the programme you will take a broad range of courses which will give you a solid foundation in all aspects of music. Courses are split into three main areas: composition, performance and cultural/historical studies. Compulsory courses include inventing and Style Studies, Analysis, Set Works, Listening and Musicianship, Performance and Keyboard Skills and Acoustics. The remaining 40 credits can be filled up with music history courses or can be used to study an option subject. You will receive a bursary for tuition in up to two instruments.

You will study Orchestration and Music and Ideas, in which you will explore music history in its cultural contexts from the medieval to the modern. At the same time you will deepen your study and practice of composition and style studies, listening and musicianship, performance and keyboard skills. After these two foundation years you will be well equipped as a trained musician and critic with a broad understanding of the discipline and the varied approaches used in studying music.

All students take Research Methods in Music, a course which provides training in many aspects of music research. You will also be free to specialise in the areas of music that most interest you, with some restriction to ensure breadth. You can select options in composition (both creative and in historical styles), performance and studio-based courses, a wide variety of specialist history topics, music psychology, acoustics and music in the community. You may also take up to 40 credits in courses outside of Music, either in third or in fourth year.

You will select courses that build on your subject choices in third year. You will also undertake one or more of a 40-minute recital, a portfolio of compositions, a dissertation, or an edition.

Courses include:

• Algorithmic Composition and Signal Processing
• Applied Keyboard Skills
• Counterpoint
• Film Music post-1950
• Harmony
• History of Instruments
• Keyboard Skills
• Music in the Community
• Musical Applications of Fourier Theory and Digital Signal Processing
• Orchestration
• Physics-based Modelling of Musical Instruments
• Psychology of Music
• Special History in Music: Wagner - Music, Philosophy and Culture
• The Kodaly Approach to Music Education
• Traditional Song - Scots
• Traditional Song - Gaelic
• Special History in Music: From Palestrina to Corelli - Music in Baroque Rome
• Composition