Undergraduate Music 2026-2027

 In this course, basic concepts of Western tonal music such as primary triads, cadences, idiomatic chord progressions, and voice leading are taught using exercises in harmonic analysis, figured bass, and part writing. More advanced concepts such as secondary dominants and chromatically-altered chords are also introduced. In parallel to lectures and seminars, students will work with software designed to reinforce key concepts such as clefs, intervals, key signatures, and scale structures.

This course provides aspiring Music Educators an introduction to theoretical understandings and practical applications of models of reflective practice.

Building on “Performing and Composing 1”, this course will guide students to developing their own range of interests in creative musical practice. Students will work towards a portfolio of creative outputs, which can include a range of compositions and musical arrangements, and recordings of solo / ensemble performances.

Students receive 10 hours of one-to-one tuition on their chosen instrument / voice, and attend lectures and tutorials focussing variously on issues related to performance, composition, and music technology.

The course provides aspiring Music Educators the opportunity to explore a broad range of historical and contemporary educational theories. The course will also examine the applications of these theories in the modern classroom setting through placement experience.

Students will develop a critical awareness of form and structure in music by studying various approaches to musical analysis. The course will draw on a range of analytical methods and musical genres, such as functional harmony and classical form, pitch-class set theory, rhetoric in music, and computer-aided analysis.

Ranging widely across space and time, this course introduces some of the reasons and methods for studying the musical past in a global context. Students will encounter case studies from across world history, with lectures summarising key topics and tutorials allowing for deeper discussion. Students will also consider how historical knowledge about music is itself the product of a global past and will be encouraged to question how we tell the stories of those who made music before us.

This course focusses on solo performance alongside the development of core classroom performance skills. Students will receive 5 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, as well as 10hrs of group tuition in Keyboard Skills, and 10hrs of group tuition in Vocal Skills.

Students will also have the opportunity to attend lectures on performance practice, interpretation, style & genre, practice regimes, managing performance anxiety, presentation and stagecraft. Students will be given opportunities to perform during performance lectures, receiving feedback from their peers and teaching staff, and honing their abilities to critique and evaluate performances.

This course focusses on solo performance. Students will receive 10 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, and attend lectures on performance practice, interpretation, style & genre, practice regimes, managing performance anxiety, presentation and stagecraft. Students will be given opportunities to perform during performance lectures, receiving feedback from their peers and teaching staff, and honing their abilities to critique and evaluate performances. Students will work towards a 15 minute recital in May.

Music plays an important part in our daily lives and is interwoven into the fabric of human social and cultural life. This course introduces students to key concepts in the study of music, culture and society (such as identity, place, religion, politics and globalisation) through a combination of lectures summarising key topics and tutorials allowing for deeper discussion. Students will approach these topics through a range of case studies from different musical genres and traditions.

This course examines the structure and function of the global music industries within the context of the creative and cultural sectors within with they operate. Primarily focused on contemporary music activity, this course examines music as a labour practice and its associated labour markets. Within this framework, it explores a range of topics such as: live music performance and associated formats, the ongoing role of record labels and the changing nature of recording contracts, music copyright, traditional and non-traditional music studios spaces and associated technologies, music distribution models and formats, the impact (and response to) the digital revolution, and the impact (and response to) the climate crisis.

There was an abundance of song in nineteenth-century Britain. On the street and in the home, on the stage and in the classroom, singing was by turns ordinary and astounding – a feature of everyday life and a wonder to behold. This course introduces students to some of the best-known songs and singers of the era while providing them with the tools to explore many more pieces and performers off the beaten track. No detailed prior knowledge of nineteenth-century song is required. 

This course develops individual instrumental/vocal  skills.  Students work on one-to-one basis (20 x 1 hour lessons) with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor on their principal study. Alongside instrumental and vocal lessons students are  encouraged to join one of the department's many ensembles working in weekly rehearsals towards high quality public performances. The course is assessed by a 20 minute recital, a tutor report and a performance essay.

Students must have achieved a CGS award of B3 or higher in year 2 in order to be able to progress to this course in year 3.

This course will build on knowledge and techniques studied and assimilated in earlier composition modules in order to create substantial, original new creations. Students will be required to assimilate new techniques and work them into their own emerging musical language for the assessment procedures. Students will be required to regularly critique existing works using these techniques and this will form part of the formative assessments.

This course focusses on solo performance alongside the development of core classroom performance skills. Students will receive 10 hours of tuition with a specialist instrumental / vocal tutor, as well as 20hrs of group tuition in Keyboard Skills, and 20hrs of group tuition in Classroom Instruments and Vocal Skills.

Students will have the opportunity to attend lectures on performance practice & interpretation, style & genre, practice regimes, managing performance anxiety, presentation and stagecraft. Students will be given opportunities to perform during performance lectures, receiving feedback from their peers and teaching staff, and honing their abilities to critique and evaluate performances.

‘Every Community Musician believes they invented Community Music’ (Imry 2013, cited in Camlin 2015)

The first part of the course course is designed to explore and challenge what community music is and can be, and what it means to each of us in our individual contexts. Using the above as a provocation as well as Kushner Walker and Tarr’s 2001 Publication Case Studies and Issues in Community Music the course will explore the practice of Community Music through academic and participatory lenses.

‘Good intentions are not enough to avoid bad results when you make art with people‘ (Matarasso 2019) 

The second part of this course is designed to situate Community Music within the broader Community Arts field exploring the role of artists in the creation of social, political and economic change.

There was an abundance of song in nineteenth-century Britain. On the street and in the home, on the stage and in the classroom, singing was by turns ordinary and astounding – a feature of everyday life and a wonder to behold. This course introduces students to some of the best-known songs and singers of the era while providing them with the tools to explore many more pieces and performers off the beaten track. No detailed prior knowledge of nineteenth-century song is required.

This course will explore ways to develop creative music making and sharing in a range of contexts, styles and genres and with consideration to community resource and restriction. The student experience is built around a participatory approach to learning and teaching. Students will have the opportunity to develop as creative musicians and also as facilitators of composing and improvising in a range of education and community settings.

The aim of this course is to allow promising student composers the opportunity to develop their own 'voice' by giving them a degree of creative freedom in what they produce. By the end of the course students are able to compose in a variety of genres, conveying a sense of structure and form in their music as well as working independently. Assessment is via a portfolio of compositions lasting c.20 minutes in performance.

As different cultures and nations have come into contact through European colonialism and globalisation, so too have their musics. In this course, we will approach the issue of cultural encounter through the prism of music, and music’s ability to represent and to bring into dialogue different cultural identities. ‘Music, Representation and Cultural Encounters’ will adopt a cross-disciplinary approach examining current scholarship in musicology, ethnomusicology and popular music studies. In the course, we will encounter a number of familiar (and not so familiar) repertoires and genres, including opera/western art music, jazz, popular music, Mediterranean and North African genres.