PhD Music (Musicology) / Overview

You will develop historical and/or analytical skills at an advanced level, with independence and originality of thought combined with technical skill. The supervised research will normally be related in some way to the research interests of a member of staff; these currently include but are not limited to:

Medieval and Renaissance music; English Baroque music; Baroque music theory and performance practice; Beethoven and his contemporaries; Music in 19th-century Germany (Mendelssohn, Schubert); Analysis; 20th-century music, especially that of Russia and the Soviet Union; 20th-century symphony; Opera; Music in contemporary culture; Ethnomusicology; Music Revivals in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Musicologists and ethnomusicologists will produce an 80,000 word dissertation that presents independent and original research executed at a high standard. They will be assigned a research panel consisting of their supervisor, a co-supervisor and advisor who will meet with them on a regular basis to monitor their progress. Postgraduate students are expected to take part in the academic community of the department and University by participating in seminars and presenting their research at regular intervals.

Recent or current PhD topics in Musicology and Ethnomusicology include: 'Aesthetic and Ideological Trends in the Reception of Mendelssohn's Music in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Sinéad Dempsey); 'Beethoven's Compositional Approach to Multi-Movement Structures in his Instrumental Works' (Erica Buurman); 'Arrogance or audacity? : the music of Sebastián Raval (?-1604)' (Esperanza Rodriguez-Garcia); 'Alfred Schnittke's symphonies 1-3 in the context of late Soviet music' (Ivana Medic); 'The Chapel Royal Partbooks in Eighteenth-Century England' (James Hume); 'Music Publishing and Compositional Activity in England, 1650-1700' (Stephanie Carter); 'Structure, rhetoric, imagery: intersections of literary expression and musical narrative in the vocal works of Beethoven' (Matthew Pilcher) 'Schumann's Music and Hoffmann's Fiction' (John Macauslan); 'Printing Polyphonic Music in the Early 16th century' (Sanna Raninen); The String Quartets of Mieczyslaw Weinberg (Daniel Elphick); 'Diligentissime Emendatum, Atque Correctum? The Transmission And Revision Of Plainchant In Italian Printed Graduals, 1499-1653' (Marianne Gillion); 'The Music of Fantasy Film Franchises: On the Creation, Evolution and Destruction of Musical Worlds' (Daniel White); 'Transmitting guitar culture within and between island communities: Maltese prejjem at home and in the Maltese-Australian diaspora' (Andrew Pace); 'Music and Spirit Possession in Yoruba Worship' (Sam Amusan)