- UCAS course code
- WW34
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
BA Music and Drama
Explore your passion for performance through the interdisciplinary study of music, theatre and film.
- Typical A-level offer: AAB including specific subjects
- Typical contextual A-level offer: ABC including specific subjects
- Refugee/care-experienced offer: BBC including specific subjects
- Typical International Baccalaureate offer: 35 points overall with 6,6,5 at HL including Music
Fees and funding
Fees
Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,535 per annum (subject to Parliamentary approval). Tuition fees for international students will be £28,500 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.
Policy on additional costs
All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).
Scholarships/sponsorships
The Department of Music will provide first-year bursaries to support undergraduate students who have demonstrated exceptional levels of achievement in their instrumental and/or vocal studies. These £1000 bursaries will be awarded in the first year of study (2024/25 academic year), paid direct to students in two instalments.
More information, including eligibility criteria, can be found here.
Course unit details:
Vocal Composition
Unit code | MUSC20362 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 10 |
Unit level | Level 2 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 2 |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
A practice-based course in which students create original compositions using voice/voices for performance and recording at the end of the course.
Pre/co-requisites
Unit title | Unit code | Requirement type | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Instrumental Composition | MUSC20321 | Pre-Requisite | Compulsory |
Aims
This course unit provides knowledge of voice types (their technical features and sonic characteristics) and how these may be combined with each other and with instrumental resources to artistic ends. The student will be able to set words to music, in sympathy with their textural meaning, subtext, stress, rhythm, grouping-structure and form. By the end of the course the student will have applied this knowledge by completing an original composition setting a text in English and bringing this to a well-prepared performance.
Knowledge and understanding
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Understand the technical and sonic characteristics of vocal resources
- Combine these with each other or with instruments
- Understand the principles of text setting – meaning, stress, rhythm, grouping structure and poetic/literary form
- Demonstrate knowledge of the principles of balance and timbral combination in scoring for voices and/or instruments
- Have a sophisticated understanding of all the principal musical parameters and use these to interact with textual structures in meaningful ways.
Intellectual skills
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Analyse, evaluate and develop sonic material within aesthetic and technical contexts
- Research existing repertoire for guidance on completing the set task
- Evaluate the potential of literary texts for musical setting, and put this into practice
- Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different compositional strategies in bringing their setting to fruition
- Plan sophisticated musical structures that interact meaningfully and coherently with literary structures and solve technical and practical problems in bringing these to successful realisation in performance;
- Apply standard professional musical notation and evaluate its applicability to creative objectives.
Practical skills
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Apply knowledge of the technical and practical features of the voice creatively;
- Articulate shapes and dramatic strategies through sound;
- Create musical shapes that interact with words in a coherent and meaningful way;
- Collaborate with singers and instrumentalists;
- Supervise and direct rehearsals;
- Produce performance materials to professional standards;
- Notate musical ideas such that they can be learnt by musicians without the composer.
Transferable skills and personal qualities
By the end of this course students will be able to:
- Demonstrate organisational and management skills in booking musicians, arranging rehearsals and preparing performances
- Demonstrate attention to detail through preparing and editing performance material to professional standards
- Demonstrate creative problem solving
- Collaborate with other students in realising their ideas, and the ideas of others
Employability skills
- Analytical skills
- Analytical skills (surveying repertoire, analysing texts and materials for musical potential)
- Group/team working
- Team work (collaborating with musicians) Interpersonal skills (collaborating with other students and musicians)
- Innovation/creativity
- Creative problem-solving (fulfilling set task with set resources)
- Leadership
- Leadership skills (being responsible for overseeing a creative product from inception through to final performance)
- Project management
- Time management (running workshops and rehearsals) Working to fixed deadlines (composing music, and preparing performance materials in time for workshops and performances); Organisational skills (finding and booking musicians and rehearsal space);
- Other
- Editing (in preparing performance materials)
Assessment methods
EITHER: Original composition for voice and two instruments from different instrumental families (excluding keyboards)
OR: Original Composition for three a cappella voices
100%
Feedback methods
- Tutorials and workshops on work in progress
- Feedback from peers in tutorials, workshops and in collaboration with performers
- Written feedback on the project
- Additional one-to-one feedback (during consultation hour or by making an appointment)
Recommended reading
- Blatter, Alfred, Instrumentation and Orchestration (New York & London: Longman, 1997).
- Barker, Paul, Composing for the Voice: A Guide for Composers, Singers and Teachers (New York & Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2004).
- Elliot, Martha, Singing in Style: A Guide to Vocal Performance Practice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
- Gould, Elaine, Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide To Music Notation (London: Faber, 2011).
- Manning, Jane, New Vocal Repertoire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994)
- Miller, Richard, The Structure of Singing: System and Art in Vocal Technique (Belmont, Ca.: Schirmer, 1996).
- Potter, John, The Cambridge Companion to Singing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- Sundberg, Johan, The Science of the Singing Voice (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1987).
- Thomson, Virgil, Music with Words: A Composer’s View (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
---|---|
Lectures | 10 |
Practical classes & workshops | 6 |
Supervised time in studio/wksp | 8 |
Tutorials | 2 |
Independent study hours | |
---|---|
Independent study | 74 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
---|---|
Joshua Brown | Unit coordinator |
Additional notes