BMus – Bachelor of Music Honours degree

Integrated Studies in Music (Year 1)

Integrated Studies in Music in Year 1 is made up of two parts: Musicianship and Creating and Performing Knowledge.

In Musicianship, you will develop your understanding of musical language through courses in Ear-Training and Musical Materials. Ear-Training develops aural awareness, which is relevant to performers and composers, through practical class work, aural analysis and individual computer-assisted coursework based on specialised online ear-training software (e.g. Auralia).

You will progressively develop your ability to memorise, understand and notate music, to recognise intervals and rhythmic patters, to sing/play back accurately what has been heard, and to recognise mistakes. In Musical Materials, you will deepen your understanding of tonal harmony in Western music by studying a variety of repertoire from the common-practice period; this may be explored through analysis or pastiche composition.

Creating and Performing Knowledge facilitates students accessing the highly creative intersection between their instinctive knowledge as performers and their expanding, explicit understanding of music. In doing so it not only supports students' developing musicianship, but also allows them to develop a language with which to understand and communicate their identity as musicians. Creating and Performing Knowledge additionally assists students in contextualising their academic work within their principal study practice and vice versa.

In Year 1, Creating and Performing Knowledge is delivered through a mixture of whole-cohort lectures, principal study tutorial groups, and individual coaching. In addition, first year students take Professional Studies 1 which aims to produce an informed, open, flexible musician with an awareness of the psychical and psychological demands of conservatoire education, of the professional aspects of music making, and who is able to engage in a variety of contexts and collaborative creative processes.

It encourages students to examine their practice holistically, introducing concepts relevant to a variety of professional contexts. The content is divided into three areas: Health and Wellbeing; Performance and Communication Skills; Professional Skills.

Integrated Studies in Music (Year 2)

In Year 2, students continue with Creating and Performing Knowledge, which begins to offer a more individualised curriculum in preparation for Year 3’s research and dissertation. Students may also continue with Ear-Training and/or Musical Materials if necessary. Otherwise, they have a choice of two electives (see below).

They also take Conducting; the aim of this module is to enable students to perform in a competent manner when faced with a situation in which they have to lead/direct/conduct a group of musicians. Students learn the foundational skills and principles of conducting in a practical setting appropriate to their individual disciplines, whereby they gain experience in rehearsing effectively and efficiently whilst remaining under the guidance of the module tutor. From term two, jazz students and electronic music students join a specialist class.

Professional Studies (Year 4)

This module explores and equips students with a range of skills related to working in the performing, creative and educational industries. Taught classes, seminars, mentored sessions and practical tasks will help you create three portfolios relevant to the main career paths for music graduates. The module is delivered through four areas: Teaching Skills, Independent Performance Project, Professional Portfolio and Cross-Departmental seminars.

Integrated Studies in Music (Year 1)

Integrated Studies in Music in Year 1 is made up of two parts: Musicianship and Creating and Performing Knowledge.

In Musicianship, you will develop your understanding of musical language through courses in Rhythm and Aural/Transcription. Jazz students will be streamed into different levels on entry, and classes will alternate weekly. Jazz Rhythm is a practical class developing rhythmic skills for performance, exploring the rhythmic vocabulary of jazz music from its origins through the integration of world and other rhythmic genres.

Topics include time feel, accuracy, pulse, groove, motivic development and displacement, less common time signatures and metric modulations. Aural/Transcription classes aim to equip students with the core aural skills necessary to absorb music, both in terms of personal study and in order to heighten real-time performance interaction and awareness. A foundation of key aural skills, from interval and chord recognition to aural assimilation of cadence and harmonic structures, feeds both the compositional and performance outputs of the student.

Creating and Performing Knowledge facilitates students accessing the highly creative intersection between their instinctive knowledge as performers and their expanding, explicit understanding of music. In doing so it not only supports students' developing musicianship, but also allows them to develop a language with which to understand and communicate their identity as musicians.

Creating and Performing Knowledge additionally assists students in contextualising their academic work within their principal study practice and vice versa. It is delivered through a mixture of principal study tutorial groups and individual coaching which run back to back with the Principal Study improvisation class. The combined length of both classes is nominally three hours. Half of this time is devoted to academic work and leads to the completion of the ISM module assessment, and half is devoted to improvisation and supports preparation towards Principal Study assessment. The balance and relationship between these two areas may vary from week to week.

In addition, first-year students take Professional Studies 1 which aims to produce an informed, open, flexible musician with an awareness of the psychical and psychological demands of conservatoire education, of the professional aspects of music making, and who is able to engage in a variety of contexts and collaborative creative processes.

It encourages students to examine their practice holistically, introducing concepts relevant to a variety of professional contexts. The content is divided into three areas: Health and Wellbeing; Performance and Communication Skills; Professional Skills.

Integrated Studies in Music (Year 2)

In Year 2, students continue with Creating and Performing Knowledge, which begins to offer a more individualised curriculum in preparation for Year 3’s research and dissertation. Students may also continue with Rhythm and Aural/Transcription if necessary. Otherwise, they have a choice of two electives (see below). They also take classes in Composition, Arranging and Conducting.

Classical students may choose to continue with further classes in Ear-Training or Musical Materials if they wish.

Jazz students may be required to continue with further classes in Rhythm and Aural/Transcription (depending on their progress in year 1), or may choose to continue their jazz musicianship classes at a higher level.

Elective modules offered may vary. Electives which are usually offered include:

Analysis

The course aims at opening students to careful listening to their typical repertoire (tonal and early twentieth century), so as to give them experience of what shapes and gives impact to such music. It also aims at fostering an awareness of the wide diversity of analytical approaches and encouraging a questioning of previously accepted norms.

Collaborative Skills

The course aims at enabling students to develop and apply skills within a variety of workshop/performance environments, through performing and presenting in new and challenging environments, including with practitioners from other art forms.

Composition

The course aims to cater for individual tastes and preferences whilst following a structured scheme of work, which enables an individual compositional style to emerge through the use of models and study of twentieth and twenty-first century works.

Electro-Acoustic Music

The aims of this module are to build on an existing foundational level of understanding and skill in electronic music, to pursue practical expertise in various instruments of music technology as appropriate to an individual student’s area of speciality, to equip students with all-round production skills appropriate for a project in the recording/production studio, to equip students with further technological skills that will enable them to respond creatively to state-of-the-art developments in electronic music technology.

Jazz Workshop (for non-jazz students)

The course is a practical performing introduction to jazz concepts and techniques, harmony and improvisation. After a basic presentation of jazz chording and voice-leading, students perform together by imitation and experimentation over simple bass and harmonic patterns.

Keyboard Musicianship

Students are divided into groups on the basis of their experience, keyboard proficiency and musical background. The aim of these classes is to develop skills that will support work in musicianship and principal study areas. For more advanced keyboard players, the course covers figured bass, score-reading, transposition, jazz chords and symbols, diatonic harmonisation, improvisation, and sight-reading. For beginners it offers a chance to develop a basic piano technique and to tackle simple keyboard musicianship tasks.

Music History (for non-jazz students)

There are two different courses on offer that are designed to cover the main aspects of Western music history from the late Renaissance to the twentieth century, with particular reference to relevant social and cultural environments and the place of music in society. The options are: 1) Baroque craft to Romantic art (1600-1900) and 2) The fragmentation of tradition (twentieth century music).

Second Study

This elective offers students the opportunity for one-to-one lessons on a specific instrument appropriate to their needs and abilities. The intention is to enable students to work intensively on skills that are not offered generally in classes and to develop individually where they have already shown application and accomplishment. The level of ability required is comparable to the standard needed for Principal Study.

Elective modules offered may vary. Electives which are usually offered include:

Advanced Ensemble

This module offers students with a particularly strong interest and talent for duo or ensemble work an additional opportunity to focus on this area. The work is intended to develop students’ capacity for autonomy and efficiency in work practice, in preparation for the nature of later experience in the outside world.

Advanced Principal Study

This module offers students with a particularly strong talent for solo or duo performance an additional opportunity to focus on this area. The work is intended to develop students’ capacity for autonomy and efficiency in work practice in preparation for the nature of later experience in the outside world.

Big-Band Arranging

The aims of this module are to establish a repertoire of big-band jazz arranging techniques, and to develop students’ abilities to create or manipulate melodic, rhythmic and harmonic materials and elements of form, whilst retaining a clear sense of musical and stylistic awareness.  

Body Matters

The module consists of classes and individual study on the interaction between the psyche and the soma (body) in the context of musicians’ performance and creation. The content of the course will include a range of body and mind issues relevant to learning, practising, creating, making and performing music. The links between mind and body will be explored. Students will have the opportunity to build upon ideas disseminated in class by choosing, in negotiation with their tutor, a particular focus for their own research, essay submission and presentation. Examples of study topics are: maintenance of good health and fitness, how to perform to maximum potential, facilitation and inhibition of musical creativity, managing competition in the profession, the ’inner critic’, and stage presence.

Brass and Wind Arranging (for classical students)

The aim of this module is to develop a professional standard of arranging for brass, wind, and percussion ensembles, to enable students to evaluate and balance artistic scope with practicality, to encourage students to produce work that reflects their personal enthusiasms and/or professional aspirations, and to develop the students’ historical, aesthetic and artistic outlook, and the ability to create their own musical challenges.

Composition for Media

The aims of this module are to introduce and develop understanding of compositional techniques appropriate for producing music for media, to generate an awareness of the factors influencing the establishment of techniques, such as composing to a brief or to a picture, to equip students with an overall knowledge of landmark films and television programmes, from a musical perspective and to equip students with up-to-date technical skills appropriate for a contemporary media composer.

Compositional Techniques (for classical students)

Techniques in Composition builds on the skills learnt in Musical Materials classes in Years 1 and 2 and uses them in more challenging contexts; this develops an understanding of historical composers’ practices which will aid students’ own performances, and develops skills that will complement and enhance learning in other elective subjects. Students choose one of five pathways: Analysis, Counterpoint, Fugue, Orchestration, and Stylistic Composition.

Conducting (for classical students)

The aim of this module is to enable students to perform in a competent manner when faced with a situation in which they have to lead/direct/conduct a group of musicians. Following on from the conducting module in Year 2, the content here is more technical, involving a considerable amount of knowledge of techniques in general and on particular chosen pieces.

Electronic and Produced Music

Students take part in classes whose purpose is to introduce electronic music instrument technology to those who are not yet familiar with it and to advance the creative understanding of those who are. The course introduces various aspects of electronic music-making: the computer, sampler, effects units and synthesiser programming.

Historical Performance: Performance (for classical students)

This module offers Second Study in historical instruments and vocal ensembles. It provides students an opportunity to explore different sound worlds and styles of performance through individual lessons and participation in ensembles. No previous experience in historical instruments is needed; an audition on modern instruments is required if you have not previously taken this module (or Second Study in Year 2). Vocal ensembles are allocated in collaboration with the Vocal Department.

Interpretation through Improvisation (for classical students)

The aims of this module are to combine a real-time awareness of structural, harmonic and stylistic factors with an individual search for interpretation, to encourage active listening and the ability to lead as well as to follow in an ensemble performance situation of both extemporised and composed music, to encourage the inner ear to ‘hear forward' beyond the actual notes played at any given moment and strengthen the real-time use of memory in performance, to strengthen the awareness of harmonic progressions and music structures as real-time dynamic events in motion, rather than just as theoretical issues, to develop the awareness of emotional expression in the context of musical performance.

Introduction to Music Therapy

The aims of this module are: to introduce music therapy, examining what it is and how it can be defined; to give students a broad overview of the application of music therapy in relation to different client groups and areas of work; to examine how theory is applied to the practical application of music therapy; to promote an awareness of different levels of activity in the work of music therapists – musical, interactive, psycho-dynamic and the ‘psychological overlay’.

Jazz Performance

The aims of this module are to develop students’ abilities to prepare and execute tonal jazz performances, to develop stylistic awareness through the study of rhythmic, melodic and harmonic materials; to establish a basic repertoire of tunes, and to address issues of interaction and spontaneity in performance.

Music, Philosophy and the Arts

The aims of this module are to give students an understanding of music in the context of the arts and culture in general, to ground students in techniques of philosophical analysis and critical reading, thinking and writing, to develop students’ understanding of their musical/performance studies in the context of contemporary society, and to develop students’ abilities in written presentation and abstract thinking.

Opera and Theatre (available only to Year 4 Principal Study singers)

This module aims to develop in the singer a good capacity for individual and ensemble performance in dramatic contexts, to equip singers with expertise which could be used in a broad range of professional contexts, to develop capacities of confidence, independence, self-reliance and self-reflection within contexts that require musical and dramatic expertise, to provide experience and opportunity on stage which correspond to the development of singers’ artistic and professional needs, and to develop appropriate communication and interaction skills in relation to audiences and performance partners.

Piano Works (pianists only)

This module develops expertise in preparing and performing contemporary pieces, and encourages curiosity and a level of familiarity with the areas of repertoire and their cultural backgrounds. It also gives experience of working, within this repertoire, in duos and small ensembles.

Research Project

The aims of this module are to further develop students’ appreciation of and engagement with musicology, to promote students’ independent study in musicology and increase their confidence in this work by developing their research skills (from identifying and refining a personal topic of enquiry to producing a final paper on this subject), to promote students’ critical faculties in reading, thinking, discussion and writing on musicological topics, and to develop a sophisticated understanding of the relevance of musicological study to the practice of performance artists.

Second Study

Second Study offers students the chance to have one-to-one lessons in a specific area where they have demonstrated exceptional ability and accomplishment. The intention is to enable students to work intensively and to follow an individual study path which is devised in collaboration with their tutor. Students can elect this module in consultation with their Head of Department and Principal Study teacher; an audition is required if Second Study was not taken in the previous academic year. Students need to have extensive previous experience and expertise on their chosen instrument and a level of playing comparable, in the choice of repertoire, to Principal Study module requirements at I/5 and H/6.

Workshop Skills

This module prepares students to lead music workshops in a variety of contexts. In the first semester, students will explore a number of areas of workshop practice including collaborative composition and repertoire-based workshops in schools, community, healthcare and hospital situations. In the second semester they will explore one area of workshop practice in greater depth, which will lead towards delivering their own workshop session.