King's College London - Faculty of Arts & Humanities
MMus in Music
London, United Kingdom
Master degree
DURATION
2 years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time, Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
EARLIEST START DATE
TUITION FEES
GBP 30,000 / per year **
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* first application deadline
** UK students: £13,500 per year | International students: £30,000 per year
Key Summary
This course offers you the opportunity to consolidate and expand your knowledge of music in a world-leading university.
In our Musicology & Ethnomusicology pathway, you can explore a wide range of music and approaches, while learning advanced skills in writing and research. Our Composition pathway allows you to develop your compositional skills and explore other areas of music studies. You can also select from a wide range of modules across Arts & Humanities at King’s.
Our location in the heart of London means you have access to major arts and research centers.
Key benefits
- Intensively taught course covering a wide range of specialised topics.
- Provides a foundation for further research focusing on current approaches and advanced techniques.
- Musicology & Ethnomusicology students choose from historical, sociocultural, and theoretical modules taught by distinguished staff.
- Composition students benefit from one-to-one lessons and participation in composition seminars and have the opportunity to hear their works performed by visiting professional musicians.
- Option to take modules in other Arts & Humanities departments at King’s, or at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
- Located in the heart of London’s music scene, with two major opera companies (Royal Opera Covent Garden and English National Opera) and two major art centres (South Bank Centre—location of the Royal Festival Hall—and Barbican) within walking distance.
Course essentials
In this course, you may specialise in either Composition or Musicology & Ethnomusicology. (Please note, we do not offer a Performance pathway.) We encourage you to choose modules that reflect your particular interests, and up to a third of your optional module choices may be from other Arts & Humanities departments, meaning you can build a broad and truly individual study pathway.
Our specialist modules will teach you current approaches to academic writing on music as well as advanced techniques for research and composition. At the end of your course, you will submit a special study – either a dissertation or a substantial work of 8-15 minutes in duration (for composers) – for which we will give you one-to-one supervision.
Our aim is to nurture leaders in musicology, ethnomusicology, and composition. If you intend to go on to research or composition at the doctoral level, or if you want to build on your existing skills, this course will be ideal for you.
Duration: One year full-time, September to September, two years part-time
Structure
You are required to take:
Required modules
Courses are divided into modules. You will normally take modules totalling 180 credits.
Musicology & Ethnomusicology Pathway, required modules:
- Special Study in Musicology or Ethnomusicology (60 credits)
Composition Pathway, required modules:
- Special Study in Composition (60 credits)
Optional modules
In addition, you are required to take 120 credits from a range of optional modules that may typically include:
Musicology & Ethnomusicology Pathway
- Approaches to Music Research 1 (30 credits)
- Approaches to Music Research 2 (30 credits)
- Topics in Music before 1700 (15 credits)
- Topics in Eighteenth-Century Music (15 credits)
- Topics in Nineteenth-Century Music (15 credits)
- Topics in Music of the Twentieth/Twenty-First Centuries (15 credits)
- Topics in Opera (15 credits)
- Topics in Jazz and Popular Music (15 credits)
- Regional Studies in Music Research (15 credits)
- Global Histories of Music (15 credits)
- Music and Digital Cultures (15 credits)
Composition Pathway
In addition, you are required to take between four and six modules (totalling 120 credits) from a range that may typically include:
- Introduction to Contemporary Composition (45 credits)
- Composing for Ensemble (45 credits)
- Orchestration (15 credits)
- Topics in Music Theory and Aesthetics (15 credits)
Plus any of the postgraduate musicology and ethnomusicology modules, such as those listed above.
You are also free to choose up to 45 of your 180 credits from Master’s modules offered across the Faculty of Arts & Humanities or from MMus modules (excluding performance and composition) offered by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
Part-time study
There is some flexibility in how students manage their programme across the two years of study, but at least 60 of the required 120 credits of optional modules should usually be taken in the first year.
King’s College London reviews the modules offered regularly to provide up-to-date, innovative and relevant programmes of study. Therefore, the modules offered may change. We suggest you keep an eye on the course finder on our website for updates.
Please note that modules with a practical component will be capped due to educational requirements, which may mean that we cannot guarantee a place for all students who elect to study this module.
Our graduates have gone on to further research at the doctoral level in the Department or elsewhere in the UK or overseas (particularly the USA). Others have transferred the skills and knowledge they develop to careers in teaching, media, arts administration and other fields.