Music MA: Performance pathway

Core modules

You will study four core modules:

This module focuses on the technical aspects of performance, and is for advanced performers who are approaching a professional standard. The module culminates in a recital, and the repertoire must be chosen from either the LRSM or FRSM syllabus.
Assessment: 15-minute recital

Following on from Advanced Performance 1, your skills will be honed through individual tuition with experts on your instrument/ voice.
Assessment: Lecture recital comprised of a 15-minute recital and a 15-minute lecture

This module runs in the autumn term. It is designed to address the extra-musical aspects of successful musical performances and is intended to complement and enhance performances given in other MA performance modules.

You will attend five two-hour seminars/workshops in the Department’s Music Health and Wellbeing series, which focus on the physical and psychological elements of performance. You will deliver a presentation summarising the key skills and techniques covered in the series, relating them to your own performance practice. You will also attend all three Barber Evening Concerts, and produce a review of each concert.
Assessment: Ten-minute presentation and three 500-word reviews

This module runs in the spring term. Following on from Performance Skills 1, it is again intended to address the extra-musical aspects of successful music performance.

You will attend five 'Performance Platform' sessions, where students perform for one another, analyse each other’s performances, and receive formative feedback from professional specialists, as well as their peers. Your assessment - a performance and short presentation - will require you to apply the skills and techniques learned in both the Music Health and Wellbeing Series (autumn term) as well as the feedback received during Performance Platform sessions. You will also attend three further Barber Evening Concerts, and produce a review of each concert.
Assessment: Ten-minute performance and five-minute presentation, plus three 500-word reviews

You will also choose three optional modules from a range which typically includes:

• Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art
• Contemporary Music Studies
• Experimental Music and Sound Art
• Historically Informed Performance

For more information, see our Music module descriptions.

Please note: A wider range of optional modules is available through the Open Pathway with Performance, but applicants for the Open Pathway with Performance should demonstrate in their application materials that they are sufficiently versatile to excel across the pathway’s more diverse range of optional modules.

In addition to your taught modules, you will present a substantial solo recital, 45 minutes in length. The recital offers you the opportunity to unite practical and theoretical musicianship, and to demonstrate the ability to plan and independently prepare (with some supervision) a performance at an advanced level.

Please note that the optional module information listed on the website for this programme is intended to be indicative, and the availability of optional modules may vary from year to year. Where a module is no longer available we will let you know as soon as we can and help you to make other choices.