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.
Academy Song Circle
Founded in 2004, the Academy Song Circle offers students the opportunity to hone their skills in the art of recital singing.
Students receive specialist coaching and performance opportunities within the Academy and at external venues around the UK.
Auditions are held annually, and successful students are invited to take part in a number of song recitals during the academic year. Singers and pianists are paired together by the Song Circle Artistic Team, and student duos are then encouraged to choose their own repertoire for Song Circle recitals, in conjunction with their professors and the Song Circle Artistic Team, fostering a spirit of artistic and intellectual curiosity and collaboration.
The Academy Song Circle gives annual recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Leeds Lieder Festival and Austrian Cultural Forum, and in recent years has also appeared at the Oxford Lieder Festival, Kings Place, the Queen’s Gallery, and the National Gallery. Events at the Academy include an annual Valentine’s Day recital and a yearly Schubertiade, held on the anniversary of Schubert’s birth, acknowledging his place as the ‘prince of song’.
Academy Song Circle has made three CD recordings: ‘Songs of Spring’, ‘Songs of Seduction’, and ‘Goethe’s Girls and Mörike’s Men’.
Academy Voices
In 2017, the Academy Voices was established to provide another performance platform for singers and accompanists, offering valuable recital opportunities to a larger pool of students. Each year, Academy Voices presents an eight-recital series at the Italian Cultural Institute in London, with each concert focussing on a specific country and its song and operatic repertoire. In each series, concerts are devoted to German and Austrian Lieder, French mélodie, Italian opera, and English song. Previous series have also included recitals of Spanish song and zarzuela, Russian romances, and Scandinavian song repertoire.
Students benefit from specialist coaching for Academy Voices recitals, and are encouraged to suggest repertoire of their own choice for each concert, in conjunction with their professors and the Academy Voices Artistic Team, which includes Kate Paterson (Head of Vocal Studies), Richard Stokes, James Bailieu, Joseph Middleton and Benjamin Mead.
Auditions
We want you to view your audition as a showcase of your storytelling and vocal communication rather than a rigid test. Our panel is looking for your unique musical personality, your technical vocal control, your language awareness, and your potential for growth. Try to relax, focus on sharing your interpretive character with the room, and let us hear who you are as a singer.
The Master of Music (MMus) selection process for Vocal Studies is integrated into our postgraduate assessment framework. This allows candidates to demonstrate their artistic maturity, technical vocal foundation, and capacity for postgraduate research through a structured multi-genre performance portfolio and an academic evaluation.
Your Audition Repertoire
For your postgraduate vocal audition, you must prepare a balanced and comprehensive selection of four items that highlights your stylistic versatility across different classical traditions, languages, and theatrical expressions.
Repertoire Guidelines:
You must prepare four items in total, which must strictly fulfill the following category checklist:
- An operatic aria.
- An oratorio aria.
- Two contrasting art songs.
Language Requirement:
- English: At least one item from your prepared list must be sung in English or an English translation.
- Memory: All performance repertoire should be sung from memory.
What to Expect on Audition Day
1. Delivery Options & Practical Assessment
- In-Person (London): You will perform live for the specialist vocal faculty panel. You will be allowed to choose your first piece to perform to the room. After this, the panel will select any further items or specific extracts they wish to hear from your remaining prepared list. 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. While the pieces do not have to be recorded in a single continuous video 'take', all recordings must stem from the same recording session. Ensure your camera framing allows the panel to evaluate your posture, breath management, and dramatic facial engagement.
2. Faculty Interview & Academic Discussion
Following the practical singing assessment, you may be asked to complete a subsequent interview with one of the postgraduate programme tutors. This discussion will focus on your performance choices, your career directions, your musical background, and your specific postgraduate study plans.
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 principal vocal 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 vocal education, teachers, masterclasses, operatic roles, concert appearances, and 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.