Guitar

Overview

This one-year Master of Music in Performance course is similar to the Master of Arts but with the addition of a Masters Project. Performance students normally study on a two-year Master’s course but, in exceptional circumstances, can take it in one year (intensive).

Your Project preparation is supported by a team of specialists and provides an opportunity for you to enhance your creative work through specialised academic study and practice-led research. Postgraduate students are a vital part of the Academy’s musical culture, working in a uniquely collaborative performance environment ideally suited to helping talented musicians — from across the globe — to achieve their musical ambitions. Students wishing to prepare applications for doctoral study will normally choose the MMus rather than the MA. This one year programme is only taken by a few candidates each year and we advise that students apply for the two-year programme. The programme path and length can be discussed at the entrance interview and adjusted as appropriate, you are not tied to the option you choose when you submit your application in UCAS Conservatoires.

Core Modules

• Performance classes
• Masterclasses
• Individual lessons for Principal Study
• Ensemble and Directed Ensemble coaching
• Lectures
• Seminars
• Academic supervisions

Elective Modules

The modules listed below will vary slightly each year in response to student needs and the evolving musical world.

Analysis and Aesthetics

This elective will explore both technical aspects of music analysis and wider aesthetic and musicological topics, with a particular focus on bringing these areas together. 

Artist Development

Our Artist Development provision is here to prepare you practically, creatively and strategically for a sustainable career in the music profession. We want you to leave here as fully-rounded, creative and adaptable musicians, with the tools and know-how to gain employment in unpredictable times. Practical sessions and intensive electives through the year include working with online content, personal recording techniques, preparing professional documents, auditioning well, how to get funding, and self-employed finances. Artist Development forms a part of the broader range of your work and activities, which we assess over the course of your studies via a portfolio.

Attentive Listening

An elective designed to hone listening skills across a wide variety of styles and genres. For 90 minutes each week an eclectic selection of music is studied, with class discussions focussing upon analytical issues or matters of interpretation, and across history are also studied. 

Composition

The Composition elective is available for postgraduate performance students who have prior experience of instrumental and/or vocal composition at degree level (or equivalent). 

Concert Programmes and Programming

This elective explores a mix of historical and current factors that underpin programming decisions across a range of music-making experiences. 

Concert Workshop

At the heart of this elective has always been the question ‘how do we communicate most effectively in concert scenarios?’ – eclipsing the more fundamental issue of ‘what is a concert?’ 

Creative Collaboration

A three-day intensive course in collaboration with Glyndebourne, led by Artistic Director Stephen Langridge, for singers, instrumentalists and composers. Through a series of workshops, the participants will explore methods of creating music theatre, and develop their abilities and skills as collaborative artists.

Contemporary Music Workshop

These classes bring together composers and performers in a collaborative environment in which musical ideas can be exchanged and developed, and the processes of collaboration explored. The classes include practical workshops where students develop their ideas, and seminars in which case studies in collaborative practice are examined. Each student participates in collaborative projects with at least one other student, developing musical materials that can take any form. Students participate in formal group presentations that include details of the collaborative processes and performances of the completed musical materials. 

Creating your own performance projects

The focus of these workshops will be how to turn an idea into a small-scale creative project, from inception to promotion and performance. 

Creative Programming and Research

This course critically examines different aspects of concert practice, exploring strategies for responding to sources (including recordings) and wider issues around programming, including audiences, venues and concert functions. 

Enhanced Performance Techniques

Open to PG students of all disciplines, this elective enables performers to deliver with greater freedom and confidence, through enhanced preparation techniques. 

Historical Performance

This Elective will give you the opportunity to explore historically informed performance on period instruments. 

The Interpreter’s Workshop

Do you think of yourself as an ‘interpreter’ or a ‘creator’? (Dare we think of ourselves as ‘creators’?) When you practise a work do you consider what other performers have done as much as you try to discover the ‘composer’s intentions’? Close listening to recordings (historical and contemporary) can reveal a surprising range of possibilities for the performer that are not captured – or even suggested – in musical scores. In this class we establish a framework for asking useful questions about these possibilities and gaining technical/expressive resources in the process. 

Open Academy

Open Academy is the Academy’s Learning, Participation and Community initiative, working with around 6,000 people beyond our enrolled students and staff each year. As the importance of participatory and community music programmes in areas including education, health and wellbeing continues to grow both in the UK and internationally, it is crucial that our students have the opportunity to obtain skills and experience in this exciting and expanding area of work. Open Academy offers lectures, seminars and workshops alongside hands-on practical experience in the field.

Performing Experimental Music

This elective provides an introduction to performing music in C20th and 21st experimental music traditions.

Performing French Music

This elective is offered to instrumentalists, singers and conducting students, covering song, solo and chamber repertoire and orchestral works (for everyone’s mutual interest).

The Pianist’s Heritage

These sessions provide a unique opportunity for reflection and debate around key repertoire areas of the pianist, and around the most burning performance-practice questions of our time – crucially how these relate to expectations in the current music professions.

Principles of Chamber Music

The Chamber Music lectures are designed to enhance all aspects of practical chamber music.

Thinking about recording / The self-directed recording artist

Led by two critically acclaimed self-producing recording artists, five sessions exploring the challenges and opportunities for today’s musician.

Transcription and Arrangement

Transcription and Arrangement is an elective open to all postgraduate performance students. This elective explores the art of arranging and transcribing music for a variety of ensembles and contexts. It will be of particular use for students wishing to arrange existing music for their own chamber ensembles, such a string quartets or wind and brass ensembles.

Entry Requirements

Academic Qualifications

You will usually hold a Bachelor's degree at lower second-class honours (2:2) or higher, or an international qualification of an equivalent standard. This degree is normally, but not necessarily, in music.

Written Requirements

Unlike the Master of Arts (MA) track, the Master of Music (MMus) in Performance requires you to submit an example of academic written work plus a project proposal. This must be uploaded to your Acceptd application profile to demonstrate your readiness for academic research alongside performance.

The academic written work must be on a musical subject and should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length. If you already have a longer piece of work, for example a thesis, please choose a representative extract.

In addition to the written work you should provide a Project Proposal in which you describe your plans and aims for a potential research project. There is no maximum or minimum word limit for this. Research projects can be variable in format: common models are a concert with an accompanying written commentary, or a written dissertation.

Your proposal should address the following questions:

• What is the subject area (repertoire, perspective) you wish to explore?
• What sort of structure do you envisage? Would the main project outcome take the form of a concert, or a written piece of work, or something else?
• How does this relate to your performance or composition interests?
• How does your proposed project relate to existing work in the field (including concert and performance practices that interest you, and/or published texts)?

At the application stage, the proposal is primarily a way for us to gauge your readiness to undertake a research project. If accepted, you will be not required to keep to your original plan, and in any case we would expect the plan to change significantly as your project develops.

In both the interview and the written work, we will be looking for evidence of your responsiveness and creativity as well as critical engagement, artistic maturity, and basic research and writing skills.

See Entry Requirements for more information.

Alumni and student successes

We’re proud to see Academy guitarists lead the way with diverse, international careers. You can see some of their recent successes below:

• Tohi Harada (postgraduate)
  2025: 1st Prize in the Ivor Mairants Guitar Award, administered by the Worshipful Company of Musicians; Awarded 'Grand Prize' and 'Rodrigo Prize' at the 14th Joaquín Rodrigo Guitar Competition in Olsztyn, Poland; Special commendation at the Viseu International Guitar Competition (Portugal)
  2026: 1st Prizes in the Segovia Academy (online) International Guitar Competition (Italy) and Dutch Guitar Foundation’s International Guitar Competition (Gröningen)
  Countess of Munster and Hattori Foundation Recital Artist
  Winner of the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Prince’s Prize and New Elizabethan Award
• Georgi Dimitrov (postgraduate)
  Acclaimed Linn recording Tales of Being, celebrating the anniversaries of John Dowland and Hans Werner Henze
  Co-Holder of the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ New Elizabethan Award: Wigmore Hall debut and appearance on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’, followed by performances for City Music Society, Surrey Hills International Music Festival, Octagon Norwich, St Martins in the Fields and Saffron Hall
• Petar Jovanovic (undergraduate); Georgi Dimitrov, Kacper Dworniczak and Tohi Harada (postgraduates)
  Awarded Julian Bream Trust scholarships for 2025-26
• Zoë Meadowcroft and Maryna Vosmirova (undergraduates) and Goncalo Maia Caetano (alum)
  Selected by the International Guitar Foundation for its Young Artist Platform
• Gonçalo Maia Caetano and Gus McQuade (alums)
  Volt Duo selected for the prestigious Kirckman Society Concert Series
• Gus McQuade and Eleanor Grant (alums)
  City Music Foundation Young Artists
  Acclaimed debut recording Seasons in Time on the Deux-Elles label
• Declan Hickey (alum)
  Invited to give a lecture at the Guitar Foundation of America’s 2025 academic symposium
• Sungbin Cho (alum)
  Debut recording Opening the Doors on the Deux-Elles label
• Plínio Fernandes (alum)
  Decca Gold Recording Artist. UK and USA tours with violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti
• Alexandra Whittingham (alum)
  Recording contract with Decca, and release of debut album Letters from Paris to outstanding acclaim in the Gramophone and BBC Music magazines, reaching 2nd place in UK Specialist Classical Album charts
• Giacomo Susani (alum)
  Carnegie Hall debut in New York performing his own Guitar Concerto; Artistic Director of the Barco Teatro Festival in Padova (Italy). Acclaimed recordings of his own music on the Stradivarius and Linn labels
• Dimitrios Soukaras (alum)
  Acclaimed debut recording with singer Lotte Betts-Dean on the Delphian label
  World Premiere of Leo Brouwer’s Concerto of Corinthos at the Megaron Athens Concert Hall with the Athens State Orchestra
• Michael Butten (alum)
  Member of the Mela Quartet on their USA tour as winners of the Guitar Foundation of America’s Ensemble Competition
• Rafael Aguirre (alum)
  International soloist and recording artist for Naxos, MDG and Warner Classics. Brilliant debut in the BBC Proms 2026 performing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the National Orchestra of Spain

Auditions

We want you to view your audition as a recital rather than a rigid test. Our panel is looking for your unique musical personality, your technical command, and your potential for growth. Try to relax, focus on your storytelling through the instrument, and let us hear who you are as a musician.

The Master of Music (MMus) selection process for Guitar is integrated into our postgraduate assessment framework. This allows candidates to demonstrate their artistic maturity, technical precision, and capacity for postgraduate research through a structured classical portfolio performance and an academic evaluation.

Your Audition Repertoire

For your postgraduate audition, you must prepare an advanced performance programme that highlights your technical mastery, musical breadth, and interpretive capability on the classical guitar. 

Repertoire Guidelines:

• You should present a contrasted solo programme of four pieces from the following list.
  • a contrapuntal work written between c1500-1750
  • a work from the 19th or 20th century in 1st movement sonata form
  • a theme with variations (from any period)
  • a work, or movement(s), from the late 20th or early 21st century
  • a dance movement (from any period)

Note for Guitar Duos: Established guitar duos are also welcome to apply at postgraduate level. The duo must perform a programme of three contrasted duo pieces, and additionally, each individual member of the duo must present one solo piece. Both partners must submit matching applications.

Repertoire for International Audition Centres

If you are selected from your video recordings to perform in person at one of our international audition centres, you should take the same repertoire items you uploaded into your Acceptd profile.

What to Expect on Audition Day

1. Delivery Options & Practical Assessment

• In-Person (London): You will perform your prepared contrasting programme live for the specialist faculty panel. As live audition time is strictly limited, the panel may choose to hear selected sections or movements of your pieces rather than the full programme. This is standard procedure to ensure they experience a balanced overview of your technical skills and repertoire within the 30-minute slot.
• Video recordings (video application, or international centres): You must upload one unedited video containing your complete audition programme to the Acceptd portal by the designated deadline. Ensure your camera framing allows the panel a completely clear and unobstructed view of both your left-hand fingerboard work and right-hand plucking technique.
• Sight-reading: All in-person guitar auditions include a mandatory sight-reading test in the audition room. This is designed to assess your rhythmic precision, harmonic awareness, and spontaneous interpretative processing of unfamiliar guitar notation.

2. Postgraduate Interview

You may participate in a structured conversation with a postgraduate programme tutor to discuss your study plans, artistic philosophies, and professional goals. 

For candidates who submit a video audition, you may also be invited to an online interview with the Head of Guitar.

Because the Master of Music (MMus) is a research-led track that includes compulsory written components, critical portfolios, or a dissertation alongside your instrument studies, your application profile must satisfy both practical and academic benchmarks.

Your digital application profile on the Acceptd portal must contain:

• Curriculum Vitae (CV): A current copy of your CV detailing your musical education, masterclasses, chamber collaborations, and solo performance history.
• Spoken English Introduction (video application, or international centres): A short recorded verbal introduction introducing yourself, your musical background, and your professional goals to the faculty panel.
• Written Material / Project Proposal: MMus candidates must submit examples of written work or a research proposal to demonstrate that they possess the critical writing and analytical skills required to undertake postgraduate academic research.

Please note: Your ultimate course placement remains flexible. Because the practical audition is identical for both pathways, all MMus candidates are automatically considered for the Master of Arts (MA) track. If the panel feels your performance standard is excellent but your academic profile is better suited to a purely practical pathway, you may be offered an MA place instead. The programme pathway and choices can be discussed and adjusted with the panel during your assessment.

For more information see auditions.