Course summary

Whatever your interests, our Musicology course gives you the unique opportunity to pursue your own research project within a lively and exciting Conservatoire environment. Our flexible course enables you to mould a programme of study to your own needs and aspirations, and may be approached as preparation for a research degree in music. It is important that a musicologist also develops complementary skills and/or knowledge outside their specialism which will help equip them for a future career: professional musicologists typically find themselves, amongst other things, teaching, managing and administering; some even maintain parallel careers as professional performers or composers. Therefore, we provide you with a choice of Professional Development Options (shared across our postgraduate programmes) alongside your musicological work to give you the opportunity to develop and/or expand your interests across a range of complementary areas. The Conservatoire team—which comprises a large number of research-active staff—has a vast array of expertise, allowing us to supervise a wide range of projects, and we are particularly keen to attract those interested in pursuing Masters-level research in our specialist areas. These include: Late Medieval Music; French Music of the 17th, 18th and 20th centuries; Italian Baroque Music; 18th and 19th Century British, Russian or Austro-Germanic Music; Contemporary Film and Television Music; Theory and Analysis; 20th-Century Music Theory and Analysis; and Music Critics and Criticism. Royal Birmingham Conservatoire also hosts a significant collection of historical instruments and we welcome studies with a focus on performance practice and/or critical editing. Recent research projects include:

• An exploration of Music Performance Anxiety in a Conservatoire Woodwind Department.

• The Music of Hans Zimmer, US Military Intervention and "The Other" in Film; the Sound of the Ungrievable.

• Easy Listening: Jerry Lanning and the BBC Radio Orchestra 1979-81.

• The Emergence and Evolution of the Piano Study in the Years 1797-1837.

• Voices from a Non-Place: An Investigation into Language, Space and the Sung Voice.

• The Lute and Non-Nobility in Elizabethan England.

• Alexei Stanchinsky (1888-1914): Context and Influences.

• Clara Schumann as Pedagogue.

• Italian Film Music During the 1930s: Political Appropriation and Socioeconomic Agendas.

• Constructive or Destructive? Assessing the Impact of Feedback in Instrumental Piano Lessons.

• Irish Rebel Music 1969-1995: Appropriation and Hidden(?) Agendas.