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 academic project proposal. This must be uploaded to your Acceptd application profile to demonstrate your readiness for academic research alongside performance.
See Entry Requirements for more information.
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, your tonal variety, 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 Strings (Violin, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass) is integrated into our postgraduate assessment framework. This allows candidates to demonstrate their artistic maturity, technical precision, stylistic awareness, and capacity for postgraduate research through a structured solo performance portfolio and an academic evaluation.
Your Audition Repertoire
For your postgraduate audition, you must prepare a demanding, contrasted solo programme that highlights your technical mastery, structural understanding, and interpretive breadth across different musical eras.
Repertoire Guidelines:
You must prepare a selection of three contrasting pieces (or movements of substantial works) of your own choice that satisfy the following parameters:
- The Solo Baroque Component: A substantial movement or movements from the unaccompanied solo repertoire (such as JS Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, the Cello Suites, or equivalent solo works for Viola and Double Bass).
- The Concerto Component: A major movement (ideally the first movement with cadenza) from a standard, substantial concerto from the Classical, Romantic, or 20th-century repertoire.
- The Contrasting Component: A third piece or movement of your own choice that clearly contrasts in style, era, or expression with your other selections.
Performance Note: Accompaniment is not required or provided for the first-round video screening submissions. For live, in-person recalls in London, you may bring your own pianist or request an Academy accompanist.
What to Expect on Audition Day
1. Delivery Options & Practical Assessment
- In-Person (London): You will perform your prepared selection live for the specialist strings faculty panel. As live audition time is strictly limited, the panel may choose to hear selected sections, movements, or extracts of your prepared pieces rather than the full items. Postgraduate candidates receive 1 hour of warm-up time at the Academy immediately prior to their assessment slot.
- Video Auditions: If you are auditioning remotely, you must upload your performance recordings to the Acceptd portal. Your files must contain unedited, high-quality audio-visual recordings of your pieces. Ensure your camera framing provides a completely clear and unobstructed view of your instrument, your full left-hand fingerboard work, and your entire right-arm bowing technique.
2. Sight-Reading Test
All in-person strings auditions include a mandatory **sight-reading test** in the audition room. This is designed to assess your quick-study capabilities, rhythmic security, and spontaneous interpretive processing of unfamiliar string notation.
Postgraduate Academic & Application Profile
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 music collaborations, orchestral experience, and solo performance history.
- Spoken English Introduction: A short recorded verbal introduction introducing yourself, your musical background, and your professional goals to the faculty panel.
- Written Material / Research 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.