Master Classical Music

Master Classical Music

The ArtEZ Master Classical Music provides a stimulating environment in which you learn to draw up and try out your ideas. Of course, you will be fine-tuning your skills, being on stage a lot, but at the same time you are urged to challenge yourself: by being curious, experimenting, asking questions and conducting research. You are challenged to let go of certainties and seek out your own motivations, and you do so always from a self-reflective point of view. The course helps you to develop not only your talents and skills, but also your vision: the artistic and social workings of your vision, with which you can take the lead in a rapidly changing work field.

As a student you develop into a highly skilled, proactive and flexible musician. The two-year course is built on curating and (per)forming identity: it provides you with the know-how and tools to showcase yourself in a rapidly changing work field and society. At the ArtEZ Conservatory, we challenge you to immerse in current developments and to construct new narratives. To collaborate within and outside your own discipline and to expand your network, looking beyond the boundaries of the familiar. Are you ready to experiment, to innovate and to further enhance your artistic practice?

The Master Classical Music is taught in Zwolle. For the full address, choose Zwolle in the location information box below.

Course structure

The master’s course Classical Music consists of an individual route with main subject lessons, a collective programme and a joint module with all the Music master’s students. As a master’s student you write your own personal study plan. This plan will become the interface through which you give shape and direction to your study activities.

The two-year Classical Music programme is flexible, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary. You combine your individual route with joint learning, while focussing on performing and curating in the Performance Lab. Your research is closely connected with the acquisition of practice-based experience.

In the first year of the master’s course Classical Music, you focus on deepening your knowledge and developing your skills. During the second year you build a portfolio based on your own route and research theme. This year you also are given the opportunity to work with an external coach.

The master’s course is completed by a master’s proof: a final concert in which the results of your research are incorporated in a creative and playful way to a jury of professionals from a diverse range of fields.

Individual route: 30 ECTS first year, 42 ECTS second year

In the individual route you follow your own main subject lessons, immersing yourself within your own discipline, deepening your musical knowledge and instrumental skills. We challenge you to take responsibility for your own study process and development: with the framework of the course as a guideline, you are free to look for creative solutions and to experiment. During the first year of the master’s in Classical Music, the individual route consists of:

• main subject lessons (24 ECTS);
• collaborative musicianship (4 ECTS) (working with a répétiteur and/or coaching in ensemble playing with fellow students);
• free space (2/4 ECTS), to be filled in by yourself.

During the second year of the master’s course Classical Music, individual research is added to your individual route.

Performance Lab: 24 ECTS first year, 14 ECTS second year

Every Tuesday you gain practical experience inside the Performance Lab. The Lab is a joint environment in which you work on stage presence, theatricality, marketing, writing, and concept development together with your fellow master’s students from Jazz & Pop. You visit and discuss each other's concerts and projects while learning from and with each other. The programme consists of three or four blocks and is concluded with a series of concerts.

In the context of Performance Lab, (inter)national professionals who left their traces in the field visit the programme in order to work on projects and assignments with the Music master’s students.

They inspire you to broaden your view on performing, which can entail so much more than simply making beautiful music. Performance is about connecting with current events, about personality, about communicating with a public and about building new audiences. Inside the Performance Lab, you are encouraged to unite the traditional and the novel, to integrate the known into the yet unknown.

Connecting the Dots (joint master’s programme): 6 ECTS first year, 4 ECTS second year

In addition to the individualized programme and the collective Performance Lab, you work together with all other music master’s students in Connecting the Dots. This programme consists of a project week, workshops and the joint concept of ‘meet the masters’. Connecting the Dots is about exchange, collaboration and coming together: you get acquainted with other music disciplines, and you benefit from studying in an environment with performers and makers who, like you, are working on shaping their practice.

Master of Music: three pathways

The master's course Classical Music is available in Zwolle, where the accent is on performing and curating. In Arnhem, the master’s courses in Music focus more on the development of an interdisciplinary practice through performing and making. The master’s course in Enschede, The Sound of Innovation, lays extra emphasis on innovation. Whichever pathway you choose, we encourage you to make use of the knowledge and classes within all three cities, developing your own unique graduation profile within the ArtEZ Conservatory.

As a Classical Music master’s graduate, you have a strong artistic and musical foundation. You know your qualities and strengths and you understand with whom and how to work together to achieve your goals. Upon graduation you are extremely aware of the context you operate in: you know how to contribute to it and how to make use of it. Having developed a proactive, enterprising, curious, critical, and open mindset, it is natural for you to think in solutions and opportunities. You have not only developed a unique artistic signature but are creative in the widest sense of the word.