Master of Music (MMus)

Entry standards

Normally a First or Upper Second class honours degree, with music being a prominent part of the degree. Approved equivalent qualifications or experience will be considered, particularly in the case of overseas students and candidates with less conventional educational backgrounds. 

English language requirements

Non-native speakers of English will normally be required to have IELTS 6.5 or above, with a minimum of 6.0 in each component (or equivalent).

Please note that the University of Surrey offers English language programmes and is also an IELTS Test Centre.

Master of Music (MMus) - structure and modules

Compulsory Modules

Research Training for Practitioners A and B

The first of these modules introduces methodology relevant to understanding and undertaking practice as research, ensuring, as part of this process, that students’ bibliographic and writing skills are developed and strengthened. Bringing together all students on practice-based pathways, a context is provided that allows for the exchange and cross-fertilisation of ideas and experiences. By incorporating the diverse skills of the module cohort, the second module is based around a collaborative practical project, developed and performed as a means of developing critical insight into the nature of practice-based research methods.

Research Training A and B (Musicology pathway only)

The Research Training modules (one in each semester) seek to provide you with the skills necessary to undertake master’s level musicological work, so that by the end of the module you will be able to summarise accurately and analyse critically the strengths and weaknesses of musicological debates, identify appropriate methodologies for particular issues; identify what constitutes effective musicological writing and show an understanding of what constitutes musicological evidence.

Composition A and B and Composition Folio

The Composition modules build from exercise-based and small ensemble work through to autonomously produced portfolios. There are no stylistic or generic restrictions on the programme and staff expertise caters for a variety of approaches to the discipline, ranging from score-based instrumental music, through improvisation, popular and jazz compositions, to works involving electronics. The music you produce may be for the concert hall or a multimedia environment such as film and TV.

Performance A and B and Advanced Performance

All students taking Performance modules receive individual tuition from one of our highly experienced team of tutors, all of whom are also professional performers. The intention of the modules is to help you develop your technical skills, musicianship and performance experience to the point where you can perform with assurance in any context and across a wide variety of styles.

Conducting A and B and Advanced Conducting

You will learn essential skills of score preparation and develop technical and gestural skills to enable you to work with confidence when rehearsing and performing with a range of ensembles. You may anticipate contributing to rehearsals of and performing with some of the University ensembles such as Choir, Orchestra or Chamber Choir, as well as contributing to the wide range of student-led ensembles. Conducting tuition is given by our Director of Conducting, Russell Keable.

Creative Practice A and B and Creative Practice Folio

The first of these modules introduces the theory and practice of free improvisation (both acoustic and digital) as a means of enhancing and developing creative practice. It explores key repertoire and history, theories concerning musical creativity and improvisation, and the practical application of group and solo improvisation. The second module is practice-led and facilitates work that hybridises across traditional divisions of practice and realisation. A portfolio of work is developed that may include any combination of creative practice including, for example, composition, performance, improvisation, musical arrangement, studio and live-electronic performance or mixed/multimedia production. Such work is further developed in the Creative Practice Folio.

Readings in Musicology A and B

While a key aim of master’s-level study is to enhance your understanding of music, such an aim is strengthened by developing your understanding of music. That understanding is found in a variety of areas of music discourse. The purpose of these two modules is to help you orient yourself within this discourse, exploring your own understanding of music within this context and, in all likelihood, changing it. Most of the time will be spent reading, discussing and critiquing a range of (largely academic) contemporary writing on a range of musics – jazz, classical, popular, film music, and so on.

Case Studies A and B

These modules allow you to develop, prepare and present a case study in musicology in a small group (typically of two or three students). You will develop your skills in musicology (analytical, historical, critical, theoretical) and develop your intellectual awareness of how to select and apply musicological methods. You will present your findings orally as a group and submit an accompanying abstract and bibliography.

Dissertation (60 or 90 credits)

This module affords you the opportunity to build on the knowledge and skills acquired in Research Training, Readings in Musicology, and Case Studies in researching, planning and executing an extended piece of writing. The length of the dissertation varies according to the credit weighing. You will be assigned a supervisor with research interests relevant to your chosen topic.

Optional Modules

Composition A and B*

Optional for students on Performance or Conducting pathways.

Conducting A and B*

Optional for students on Composition or Performance pathways.

Orchestral Management 1 and 2

While UK orchestras lead the world, there is a lack of coherent orchestral management training and professional development in the UK. Music at Surrey has long-established relationships with several symphony orchestras, especially those based in London; in association with the Association of British Orchestras, we have developed two new, innovative modules in orchestral management. You will gain insight and understanding of the major factors and key issues governing orchestral management and development through a taught module with input from managers and practitioners associated with the UK’s leading orchestras, and by a module of situated study with an orchestra allowing you to observe, shadow, interview and engage in professional dialogue with orchestral managers, administrators and players. You will also be introduced to Action Learning facilitation and be part of an Action Learning set.

Performance A and B*

Optional for students on Composition or Conducting pathways.

Screen Music Studies

This module explores the latest issues in the history, aesthetics and techniques of scoring the moving image. Challenging established frameworks, it looks at diegetics, narrative, temporality, ‘visual music’, surrealism, the avant garde, pre-existent music, Hollywood and non-Hollywood practice, and genre studies, as well as giving an opportunity to score a film/TV excerpt.

Studio Techniques

The purpose of this module is to enable you to develop and refine skills in recording and manipulating acoustic sound using a ‘home studio’ set-up. The module facilitates a wide range of approaches including producing a seamlessly edited recording, assembling separately recorded tracks and the creative use of sampling, synthesis and other computer audio techniques. The possible applications of this module range from producing a demo CD/showreel of performances to studio-based instrumental compositions and entirely electro-acoustic works.

Level 3 Undergraduate Modules

Up to two modules may be chosen from the final-year undergraduate programmes in Music and Creative Music Technology, including African American Music, 19th Century Aesthetics, Pluralism in Western Music, Rock Track Poetics and Jazz Studies 2. The MMus Programme Director should be consulted for confirmation of the modules on offer in any given year.

*Enrolment on these modules is subject to a satisfactory audition or portfolio of work.

Pathways

The MMus offers the following specialist pathways:

• Composition
• Performance
• Conducting
• Creative Practice
• Musicology

The Composition pathway is designed to develop your individual compositional style and technique through tutorial guidance and opportunities for performances, workshops and recordings in the Department. Various stylistic and generic strands can be taken up either individually or in combination, including concert music, popular music, jazz, music for screen and multimedia, and computer sound design.

The Performance pathway enables you to develop professional expertise on your instrument/voice, within the context of the range of departmental opportunities for performance. You will be tutored and assessed on one instrument (or voice) by visiting professionals of national and international standing in their fields who will guide you in consolidating and developing your technique, repertoire knowledge and interpretative insight.

The Conducting pathway is only available part-time and is designed to develop conducting techniques to a professional level and to enhance the understanding of relevant theoretical principles. You will attend conducting classes (score analysis and preparation, rehearsal techniques, gestural techniques, critical analysis of recordings, and so on) and contribute to rehearsals with the Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, ensembles and Chamber Choir.

The Creative Practice pathway is designed for creative musicians who cannot easily separate performance and composition in their work, for example, musicians working in improvised musics, singer-songwriters, those interested in live electronics, and so on. Teaching and study progress from closely taught modules designed to secure and extend technique to more autonomous project-based learning opportunities. Your final portfolio will likely feature a combination of live performance and composition.

The Musicology pathway is structured in order to accommodate a flexible approach that reflects developing staff research interests, students’ own specialisations and the increasingly polyglot nature of the discipline. Art and popular musics are both catered for within the pathway, drawing on the expertise of staff across these areas. A dissertation of either 60 or 90 credits may be offered.

Your choice of pathway will be reflected in the title of your final award, for example Master of Music (Composition).

Master of Music (MMus) - entry standards

Entry standards

Normally a First or Upper Second class honours degree, with music being a prominent part of the degree. Approved equivalent qualifications or experience will be considered, particularly in the case of overseas students and candidates with less conventional educational backgrounds. 

English language requirements

Non-native speakers of English will normally be required to have IELTS 6.5 or above, with a minimum of 6.0 in each component (or equivalent).

Please note that the University of Surrey offers English language programmes and is also an IELTS Test Centre.

Application procedure

To apply for an AHRC Professional Preparation Masters Studentship, please note that in addition to completing the standard online postgraduate application form below, applicants should also read our guidance notes and complete the Block Grant Partnership Funding application and reference form below.

Guidance Notes (Microsoft Word Document)
Block Grant Partnership Funding Application Form (Microsoft Word Document)
Block Grant Partnership Funding Reference (Microsoft Word Document)

For further information on the AHRC Block Grant Partnership, visit the Oxford Brookes University website.

Planned intake

Full-time: 8
Part-time:12

Start date

Programme director

• Dr Tom Armstrong

Master of Music (MMus) - fees and funding

Fees

Music (full time):

UK/EU - £6,400 
Overseas - £11,865

Music (part time):

UK/EU - £3,200 
Overseas - £5,935

www.surrey.ac.uk/pgfees/2012

Funding

The Arts and Humanities Research Council offers a variety of studentships. Applications are usually made in the spring before a programme begins. Applicants should contact the Programme Director for information about University and Departmental funding opportunities.

Master of Music (MMus) - professional context

Careers

Some students undertake a Masters programme for the intellectual stimulation of further study, or to enhance their career prospects, but for many students it is an important first stage towards future research work at PhD level. 

Surrey postgraduate music students have entered a wide variety of careers and further study: 

• Doctoral research (Surrey, Oxford, Royal Holloway and elsewhere) 
• Professional conducting and performance (Bath Philharmonic, Guildford Opera) 
• University lecturing (Durham, Keele, Liverpool, Surrey) 
• Teaching (Winchester College, Yeovil Sixth Form College) 
• Arts administration and journalism

Master of Music (MMus) - teaching

Contact hours

Teaching and self-study hours depend on the choice of optional modules.

Staff perspective

Dr Tom Armstrong

Unique to our programmes is the plurality of content and the ease with which practical and theoretical explorations of music can be combined.

Music at Surrey has always looked outwards, with many staff engaged in professional careers as composers, performers and arts administrators as well as academics. Our Masters programmes seek to develop professional skills and inculcate professional values in order to prepare postgraduates to continue their engagement with music in the working world.

My own experience as a professional composer very much supports this ethos; I compose for a variety of contexts including the concert hall, community settings, dance and the theatre, as well as conducting research into collaborative processes in composition. I bring stylistic breadth, technical control and intellectual curiosity to my work with Masters composers.

I greatly enjoy the spirit of creative entrepreneurship fostered by the supportive environment of the Department. Student-led initiatives are actively encouraged with many opportunities to get involved. As a postgraduate student at Surrey you will find yourself part of a vibrant musical community in which you can acquire skills and experience of great value to your future work.

Master of Music (MMus) - learning

Master of Music (MMus) - graduate profile

Student Profile: Rachel Musgrove

MMus Master of Music

As a mature student living locally, I have gone back into education to become a secondary school music teacher. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time as a second career, now that my children are quite independent.

I embarked on the MMus to re-focus on my specialist subject so I could begin teacher training with confidence. The programme is intellectually challenging with a good mix of taught modules coupled with opportunities to explore personal areas of interest.

I have surprised myself during this course in finding areas of interest which I hadn’t previously switched on to. The compulsory Research Training module was one example; I am finding the world of musicology fascinating and the depth of research demanded has undoubtedly sharpened my thinking skills.

I feel that I have a much better understanding of why music teachers today teach such a broad curriculum; the course offers modules in all sorts of areas of music and students come from a variety of musical backgrounds.

On a personal level, I have gained confidence in the depth of knowledge I have in my subject. I also feel that the performance module I took and the presentations I have given have developed some useful skills in holding the attention of an audience. This will undoubtedly help me stand up in front of a class and teach.

The number of students I have come across staying on to do the MMus, having completed their first degree course at Surrey, is a testament in itself to how much we like it here.

Student Profile: Adrian Mumford

MMus Master of Music

Already well into a successful career, I am an accountant and company secretary by training. Music has always been a full-time pastime for me. I enjoy going to both opera and concerts as well as singing in three choirs. In addition to my singing, I am the organist at Lambeth Palace and Director of Music at Twickenham Parish Church.

The easy proximity from home in Twickenham and, more importantly, the flexibility and very broad range of the course greatly interested and appealed to me.

As a mature student, I find the course hugely energising and stimulating. I am enjoying being able to research subjects which are very largely my own choices and engaging with members of the music teaching team. I value the challenges from tutorials which stimulate thought.

Development of my research skills in music and greater fluency and confidence in writing about music will help when I am called upon for programme notes and reviews, associated with choirs to which I belong.

I would unhesitatingly and unreservedly recommend the course to others. In fact, I would like to do it all again myself!

Master of Music (MMus) - more

Programme Aim 

Postgraduate music programmes at Surrey are designed in recognition of the changing profiles and needs of advanced musicology and the music marketplace. Our programmes have the flexibility necessary for you to fully develop your individual interests in the academic or practical study of music. Our aim is to train you to the highest level in the academic, creative, re-creative, technical, critical and vocational areas of the subject.

Selection Process 

Potential applicants may make an appointment for an informal interview with the Programme Director if practicable. All applicants will be asked to submit either a sample of written work, a DVD of their performance, samples of their compositional work or to sit an audition depending on their chosen specialism.

Short course opportunities

The Department welcomes applications from students who wish to undertake one module of study from the Masters programme.

Music at Surrey 

Music activities at Surrey are characterised by two qualities: integration and breadth. We have a bias towards the music of modernity; consequently, the majority of our taught modules and our research addresses music since the mid-nineteenth century.

However, your interests will be encouraged and developed, whether they lie in composing, performance, sound design or musicology. Programmes are structured so that almost any musical activity you might want to engage in can receive credit, and none is regarded as of less intrinsic value than any other.

The Department boasts expertise in a range of musical fields, including concert music, popular music, film music, opera, acoustic, electronic and computer-generated music. This expertise is extended to musical techniques, historical study, analysis, aesthetics and cultural study. We also oversee a range of ensembles, including symphony
and pops orchestras, jazz choirs and big bands, chamber ensembles and ad hoc groups, all of which enable your focus to be as narrow, or as wide, as you wish.

This breadth is reinforced by our approaches to research, and the questions we address. In short, music within the Department is vibrant, forward-looking and distinctive. And, as our performance activities are very much the public face of the University, we play a valued role in making music accessible to a wide range of people.

Music Research at Surrey 

Our work achieves wide international circulation, both through established scholarly channels and, distinctively, through broadcast media (such as, BBC Radio
4 and National Public Radio in the USA). Departmental staff are much in demand for pre-concert talks at venues such as London’s South Bank and Barbican centres.

The research environment at Surrey is sustained by open discussion and debate, and through the regular airing of work-in-progress. Our work is
strengthened by the ready input of our peers and research students at various stages: collective engagement with each other’s work fosters innovation. Recent examples of work include:

• Establishment of the Processes in Music Making Research Group (PiMMReG) to conduct practice-led research exploring the nature and practice of collaborative processes in music making. The group has hosted a Palatine Study Day and forged links with the Belgium-based Orpheus Institute for Advanced Studies and Research in Music.
  
• Jeremy Barham’s two forthcoming monographs explore Mahler in cultural and philosophical perspectives, and the temporality of film music. He is series editor of the Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz.
  
• Steve Downes’ Music and Decadence in European Modernism: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe (CUP, 2010) is the first full-length musicological study of decadence, considering the music of Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, Bartok, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Szymanowski, Wolf, Berg and Schoenberg. Ashgate will shortly be publishing a monograph on Hans Werner Henze’s Tristan, constituting a case study in the twentieth century's complex relationship to Wagner.
  
• Allan Moore has recently completed two AHRC-funded projects on spatialisation in popular song recordings, and a number of articles have been recently published or are in press. He is currently working on two books (on the interpretation of recorded song, and on English folk song) and is series editor for Ashgate's eight-volume Library of Essays on Popular Music, forthcoming in 2011.
  
• Stephen Goss’ 2008/09 commissions included a guitar concerto for EMI Classics (Xuefei Yang and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra) and collaborations with Natalie Clein, Nicola Benedetti and Grammy® winner David Russell (Telarc). His EMI recording of The Chinese Garden won Best Instrumental CD in the Classical CD Awards (2008) in China.
  
• Clive Williamson’s One Minute Wonders performance project, which has already been contributed to by over 60 composers, continues to stimulate new work and performances in an expanding range of styles and media.

Academic Staff 

Dr Tom Armstrong – Lecturer in Composition and MMus and MRes Programme Director

Dr Jeremy Barham – Senior Lecturer in Musicology 

Professor Steve Downes – Reader in Musicology and Head of Department

Professor Sebastian Forbes – Emeritus Professor of Music

Professor Stephen Goss – Reader in Composition

Dr Tim Hughes – Lecturer in Popular Music

Russell Keable – Tutor in Conducting

Dr Chris Mark – Senior Lecturer in Musicology

Dr Milton Mermikides - Tutor in Music

Professor Allan Moore – Professor of Popular Music

Pete Morris – Senior Tutor in Creative Music Technology

Dr Matthew Sansom – Lecturer in Composition

Clive Williamson – Senior Tutor in Performance

Master of Music (MMus) - apply

To apply for an AHRC Professional Preparation Masters Studentship, please note that in addition to completing the standard online postgraduate application form below, applicants should also read our guidance notes and complete the Block Grant Partnership Funding application and reference form below.

Guidance Notes (Microsoft Word Document)
Block Grant Partnership Funding Application Form (Microsoft Word Document)
Block Grant Partnership Funding Reference (Microsoft Word Document)

For further information on the AHRC Block Grant Partnership, visit the Oxford Brookes University website.

• MMus Music (Composition) - Full-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Conducting) - Full-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Performance) - Full-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Creative Practice) - Full-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Musicology) - Full-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Composition) - Part-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Conducting) - Part-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Performance) - Part-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Creative Practice) - Part-time - starting September 2012
• MMus Music (Musicology) - Part-time - starting September 2012