Head of Composition: Philip Cashian DMus, BMus, Hon ARAM
Guardian Interactive presents Paul Morley Showing Off
Paul talks about his year in the Composition Department at the Academy
How to be a Composer (youtube)
The BBC4 programmes featuring Paul Morley at the Royal Academy of Music
The Courses
Composition at the Academy has an international reputation centred on intensive project-based undergraduate (four-year BMus) and postgraduate (two-year MMus, one-year MA and three-year PhD) programmes.
All work is rehearsed and recorded in regular workshops with instrumental and vocal students. Many opportunities arise for student compositions to be played by ensembles and orchestras, and commissions are offered to write for a large number of events with professional performers both within and outside the Academy.
A seminar series underpins all studies and features guest composers such as Brian Eno, Hans Abrahamsen, Jonathan Harvey, Gerald Barry, Simon Holt, Howard Skempton and Johannes Maria Staud.
Undergraduate BMus
The four-year BMus in Composition is designed to reflect the opportunities and challenges faced by today’s music creator. It uniquely integrates the traditionally distinct areas of ‘media’ and ‘concert’ composition.
The undergraduate curriculum includes individual tutorials, orchestral workshops, weekly composition and analysis seminars, orchestration classes, Media Music Ensemble, electronic techniques, Writing to Picture and education workshops.
Postgraduate MMus
The MMus in Composition is an intensive two-year programme with a demanding schedule of project-work.The aim is for students to consolidate their technical skills and to gather experience of composing in as wide a range of professional contexts as possible, whilst stimulating the development of their particular compositional personalities.
Critical reflection is conceived as vital to this balance of internal and external stimuli, so all postgraduate composers engage in academic project-work: either a Research Project or Concert Project (the organisation and presentation of a concert built around the composer’s own music).
Postgraduate composers are expected to become involved in concerts and different kinds of collaborative work, and to make the most of the Academy’s thriving environment.
Your Audition
You must send your portfolio to the Registry by 1st October 2010. Please see the Composition Auditions page for detailed BMus and MMus portfolio requirements.
2009–2010 Highlights
> Workshops or performances of all music composed over the year, a total of more than 80 works
> Collaborative project with London Sinfonietta, resulting in performances of student works at the Southbank Centre Performances of student works at Spitalfields Music, Canterbury Sounds New and Aldeburgh Festivals Orchestral showcase concert
> Concerts, discussions and composition classes with visiting composers Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Weir and Richard Causton
> Undergraduate recording sessions with a Studio Orchestra, Symphonic Wind Ensemble and Manson Ensemble Performances of student works at Kings Place, Sounds New Festival, the Blouin Institute and by the Youth Orchestra of the Middle East in Dubai
> Regular workshops with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
> Orchestral project and concerts with the Southbank Sinfonia
> Projects with Bristol School of Animation
> Collaborative project with choreographers at Roehampton University
> Composition project with the Solstice String Quartet
> Student performances by the Esbjerg Ensemble in Denmark
> Electroacoustic works performed as part of ‘Nonclassical’ club night
> Open-score composition project with CoMA (Contemporary Music-Making for Amateurs)
'There were no vacant thoughts from the Royal Academy of Music student composers… All received gutsy performances from the Academy students; this was a concert full of hope'
The Times, June 2006
Illustrious Past Students
Craig Armstrong; Sir Richard Rodney Bennett; Sir Harrison Birtwistle; Ruth Byrchmore; Cornelius Cardew; Brian Ferneyhough; Nicholas Maw; Michael Nyman; Paul Patterson; Sir John Tavener; Augusta Read Thomas; and many recent graduates, including Luke Bedford, Nimrod Borenstein, James Brett, Joe Duddell, Adam Gorb, Alwynne Pritchard, James Radford, Luis Tinoco and Philip Venables.