Studying Composition at Guildhall Artist Masters level prepares you for professional life as a composer. It allows you to explore and refine your individual artistic voice within the collaborative atmosphere of a busy, modern conservatoire, while also giving you the space for self-reflection. The MMus/MComp can also be studied as a purely electronic specialism.
Guildhall School offers some of the most stimulating and creative training for composers in the UK. Studying Composition at Guildhall Artist Masters level prepares you for professional life as a composer. It allows you to explore and refine your individual artistic voice within the collaborative atmosphere of a busy, modern conservatoire, while also giving you the space for self-reflection.
The programme centres around weekly one-to-one Principal Study lessons. You will be allocated to one of the Department’s distinguished Faculty of composers, who will guide your creative participation on core projects across the year. The outcomes of core projects are all workshopped, rehearsed, publicly performed and recorded. Weekly composition seminars and open sessions support technical, aesthetic and professional development, and a choice of elective modules support specific aspects of your development.
Designed for recent graduates and suitably qualified mature students, our taught Master of Music (MMus) and Postgraduate Diploma (PgDip) Choral Conducting courses provide the technical training, collaborative opportunities and podium time necessary to help you prepare for a career as a professional conductor....
WHAT'S COVERED IN THIS COURSE?
- Regular individual specialist tuition.
- Vocal lessons.
- Opportunities to join orchestral conducting classes.
- A dedicated chamber choir, ‘Camerata’, managed and nurtured by students on the course.
- Involvement in rehearsals of the Conservatoire’s highly acclaimed Chamber Choir, which has a regular and highly successful recording programme.
- Many other choral singing opportunities within the Conservatoire.
- Bespoke support classes in musicianship and repertoire.
- A core career development module designed to get you thinking about your future professional plans.
- The flexibility to choose from a broad menu of Professional Development Option modules designed to help you work towards achieving your personal career aspirations.
- In MMus, a core module designed to develop your skills as a researcher or informed practitioner.
- The possibility of transferring from PgDip to MMus once you have begun your studies (but before completion of the PgDip course).
The Master of Music (MMus) programme is designed for students wishing to be professional musicians: performers and composers. It aims to equip students with the necessary musical skills, insight and and experience required by the contemporary profession in its widest sense but with a focus on the Western Classical and Jazz traditions.
Our named Awards: Collaborative Piano, Composition, Ensemble Artistry, Jazz, Performance and Performer-Composer each offer comprehensive specialist training pathways. (Find out more in Course Details).
Key Features
- Provides advanced musical training at postgraduate level which encourages the demonstration of individual musical talent and scholarship.
- Enables musicians of proven ability, and with the potential for further training, to advance and refine their skills and specialism/s and deepen their professional expertise.
- Acknowledges the significance of musical context, highlighting the relationship of music to wider artistic, historical, philosophical, cultural and/or social practices, issues and/or phenomena.
- Cultivates musicians who have the ability to work in a variety of complex musical groupings and to exercise leadership in professional practice.
- Creates an environment which encourages risk and nurtures creativity and innovation, reflecting cutting-edge thinking within the profession.
- Produces enterprising, entrepreneurial musicians equipped both for today’s diverse, internationalised and ever-changing music profession.
- Explores the application of artistic research within a clearly defined are of music.
Our Music MMus offers you the highest level of training in contemporary music. We’ll teach you the necessary skills, techniques and methodologies to work at an advanced level with a critical awareness of relevant music disciplines.
Our award-winning staff are eminent practitioners and scholars in their respective fields. Operating over the widest range of style and practice, we’ll work closely with you in your musical development.
You’ll graduate from our course as an independent and relevant contemporary musician with the fullest knowledge of theory, practical skill, critical reflection and creativity.
On this course, you will learn the creative, re-creative, technical, critical, vocational and academic areas of contemporary music practice.
You’ll study a range of interlinked practices, including performance, composition, musicology and relevant skills in music technology. You will be able to specialise in any or several of these areas, preparing you for a future career in music and also providing a foundation for PhD study.
You’ll learn about the current developments within the contemporary theory and practice of music, so that you can work confidently and constructively within the musical culture of the present.
If you’re looking to progress onto a PhD research project after you graduate, this course will help to prepare you for doctoral level study in music-related areas.
The MMus in Musicology allows you to develop specialised skills in researching and writing about music, and to pursue, in greater depth, an area of special research interest.
There is considerable scope to tailor the programme to suit your own research interests. In addition to the compulsory courses, students choose two courses from a range of options that changes each year. A further, free elective allows you to choose one course from a very large number of options across the whole university, allowing you the added perspective offered by disciplines outside of musicology, or to study a further course in Music. In addition to the final dissertation, students also devise and undertake a smaller research project in the earlier part of the programme.
The MMus in Musicology provides an excellent foundation for further postgraduate work, and many of our students have gone on to work in academia.
Recent graduates have also established successful careers in performance, journalism, arts administration, music education, and librarianship.
