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.
In association with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
This Masters programme allows composers and writers to focus on how new opera is created, developed and performed. Part of an exciting partnership between Guildhall School and the Royal Opera House, the programme centres around the creation of a 25-minute chamber opera which is fully staged in Milton Court Studio Theatre.
The programme admits three composers and three writers each year. During an initial induction module, students pair up into composer-writer teams. Each team develops a short opera scene, before going on to create full chamber operas. Two smaller projects allow you to follow your own creative pathway: in poetry, prose, dramatic or film script (writers), and in vocal or instrumental/ electronic works (composers).
The programme focuses on the collaborative nature of opera making, and each composerwriter team is supported by collaborative mentoring. Students also take part in one-to-one tutorials, production seminars and creative development workshops.
Led by Julian Philips, Head of Composition, Stephen Plaice, Writer-in-Residence, and Laura Bowler, composition professor, teaching is enriched through regular seminars with visiting professionals from the opera world including conductors and directors, singers and instrumentalists, designers and stage managers.
The programme collaborates closely with Guildhall’s award-winning Opera Department, led by Dominic Wheeler, with Guildhall opera singers forming the cast for the chamber operas created by composer-writer teams.
Practical experience of opera during the year is hugely augmented by the programme’s association with the Royal Opera House, which provides opportunities to see productions in rehearsal and performance, and to meet and network with key resident and visiting practitioners.
We want to ensure you become who you want to be musically and can make your living working with music. The course helps you develop your skills in popular, contemporary and commercial music and equips you with the essential business skills to succeed. You’ll develop a broad range of skills across performance, songwriting and the production of song demos.
You get your music in front of an audience through frequent gig nights, regular festivals and industry showcases. Aside from the business, you also learn how to match your music with an audience. You can collaborate with students from other courses, for example: recorded and live sound, lighting design and management students.
This course integrates acting, dance, movement, singing and spoken voice within a framework of relevant theory and research, in order to train students to a professional level. Specialist lecturers and professional artists deliver classes and workshops that complement Central’s experienced teaching staff. Emphasis is placed on acquiring and practising skills through creativity, collaboration and performance within all aspects of music theatre. Imagination and creativity are valued, and are explored from many different perspectives.
Where students demonstrate skill and interest, there are opportunities to create original work and to pursue related activities, such as composing, writing, choreography and acting with instruments.
On the Writing for Performance course, you can:
- Develop skills for writing for performance practices
- Create new performance work and explore innovative forms of writing for solo performance, verbatim theatre and devised theatre
- Work with award-winning playwrights, arts practitioners and directors
- Position yourself as a writer within the performance process
- Explore a broad curriculum that is centred around socially engaged performance practices and the dramaturgical skills of writing
- Develop your writing skills in different community contexts in the UK and abroad
- Study alongside students on the BA DATE and BA Performance Arts programmes, offering a vibrant meshing of writing and live performance art at undergraduate level at Central.
You will work with a variety of high profile writers, arts practitioners and directors, encountering a diverse range of innovative performance practices that use writing for performance in different ways.
These courses provide the opportunity for students to develop the core competencies and skills of the dramatist and scriptwriter, to explore their own ‘voice’ and develop their confidence as dramatists and scriptwriters, and to appreciate the specific media contexts within which professional writers work.
Key features are:
• Practice-based enquiry into techniques and processes for writing for stage and screen
• A series of scriptwriting projects to engage with different styles and formats of production
• Associated study of writing techniques and issues of performance in relation to theatre, cinema, television and other relevant contexts.
These courses provide the opportunity for students to develop the core competencies and skills of the dramatist and scriptwriter, to explore their own ‘voice’ and develop their confidence as dramatists and scriptwriters, and to appreciate the specific media contexts within which professional writers work.
Key features are:
• Practice-based enquiry into techniques and processes for writing for stage and screen
• A series of scriptwriting projects to engage with different styles and formats of production
• Associated study of writing techniques and issues of performance in relation to theatre, cinema, television and other relevant contexts.
BA Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Wimbledon College of Arts is for students who are interested in making performance.
BA Contemporary Theatre and Performance will give you the opportunity to develop as a collaborative theatre-maker, creative entrepreneur and innovative performance practitioner. You will work collaboratively to create contemporary theatre productions and to develop innovative forms of performance.
The course will enable you to work in an ensemble and to form a company or collective. You will plan, design, develop and deliver performance projects for a range of theatrical and non-theatrical locations and contexts, ensuring your work is engaged with contemporary culture.
