BMus (Hons) Performance 

Performance Development

You will work one-on-one with a vocal or instrumental specialist to assess your current repertoire and begin an exploration of new work.

This module provides an overview of skills particular to your individual vocal or instrumental style, and you will explore different approaches to performance.

Ensemble

You will explore a musical style in your practical work and build confidence in your approach to chamber music and other relevant ensemble styles. You will learn to work as a team in presenting and preparing a performance under the direction of a specialist ensemble coach.

Personal Development

You will be introduced to a range of strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner, including models of successful self-development.

This module will help you develop self-awareness in your strengths and weaknesses, and will include workshops on a variety of tools, such as mindfulness, managing stress, nutrition, setting achievable goals, employability and careers, yoga, tai chi and vocal health.

Masterclass

This module develops your basic performance and communication skills and your sense of performance context. You will develop your repertoire, your understanding of style and your skills in preparing for an audition or performance.

You will take part in group performance classes as well as individual tutorials to develop your work, as well as your skills in forming critical judgements of performance.

Musical Grammar

This module will introduce, reintroduce and familiarise you with a range of music theories (traditional, jazz, rock) and aspects of musical structure and notation. Alongside this, you will present and discuss your work, both individually and in groups, enhancing skills in teamwork and presentation and building confidence.

Ensemble 2

As in year one, this module allows you to explore your potential as a team player in performance. You are encouraged to explore the commercial potential for your performing ensemble, and longer-term planning and repertoire-building strategies will be emphasised in rehearsals and coaching sessions.

Masterclass 2

This module is intended to extend performance and communication skills and to further enhance a sense of performance context. You will continue to develop your current repertoire as a singer or instrumentalist, your understanding of style, and your skill in preparing for an audition or performance.

The importance of communicative performance and of an actively engaging relationship with the listener will be emphasised in group performance classes, and a good standard of critical self-reflection will be encouraged in preparing you for the assessment task.

Music Performance Practice 2

This module will be delivered in workshop/masterclass style sessions, which balance theoretical and practical concepts, addressing aspects associated with the craft of expressive music performance, including the development of expressive facility, the art of responsiveness, using artistic performance devices and developing rapport with an audience.

Working in a complementary way to the performance development in your first year, this module allows you to focus on your expressive palette by deconstructing the concept of expressive performance into a variety of component parts.

You will be guided to consider acoustic and non-acoustic variables such as phrasing, articulation, dynamic range, tonal quality, and use of pace and gesture, in order to most effectively utilise your growing technical and musical facility.

Performance Development 2

In this module you will develop an exploration of musical style in practical work and be encouraged to approach new and more ambitious repertoires.

A more sophisticated relationship to presenting performance and to preparing for audition will be encouraged, while you work under the direction of an individual vocal or instrumental-specialist teacher.

You will be emboldened to take risks in selecting material for study and to question previously held assumptions about the limits of your capacity to achieve as performers.

Languages

You will develop your knowledge of a variety of repertoire in the three main languages being studied, with weekly lectures in French, Italian and German.

You will be exposed to essential language skills and pronunciation for song and opera, and enhance your understanding and practical skills in addressing the challenges in working within different musical styles and languages.

Professional Resilience 2

A successful career as a performance professional needs to be informed, alongside artistic and communication skills, by an understanding of the nature of personal strengths and weaknesses.

This module will seek to develop this self-awareness and to encourage a confident approach to the world beyond university, enabling a tailored combination of learning and practice approaches which encourages an awareness of individual character and circumstances.

Roots of Jazz to Modern Jazz

Previous jazz experience is needed to take this module.

This module will explore the roots of jazz, primarily focusing on the development of jazz between 1890 and 1930 and critically analysing the social, political and cultural context in New Orleans.

The module will also examine the music and musicians that helped to create jazz and will consider the relevance of early jazz with regards to contemporary jazz education and performance.

The focus of study will go on to explore important developments in jazz from its birth in New Orleans to the present day. By examining the history of jazz’s inception through to the current developments, you will gain a broad understanding of the major styles and the particular innovators in the field.

Second Study

The second year of study is intended to develop an exploration of musical style in practical work and to encourage a willingness to approach new and more ambitious repertoires. A more sophisticated relationship to presenting performance and to preparing for an audition will be encouraged, and you will undertake this work under the direction of an individual vocal or instrumental specialist teacher.

Self-Employment and Promotion

This module will explore the local and national marketplace for instrumental, vocal or dance teaching, as well as music and musical theatre performance and acting. It will introduce you to a number of different models of successful positioning within it.

A successful career as a professional needs to be informed, alongside performance and communication skills, by an understanding of the nature of self-employment in business, as well as the skills needed to become employed. This module will seek to develop this, and to encourage a confident approach to the world beyond university, enabling a tailored financial, business and career planning which encourages an awareness of local markets and circumstances.

Club Music

Examine how music is used in clubs, the motivations of clubbers themselves, and the development of the role of the DJ.

You will consider the way technology has shaped the experience of club music, and how legal and marketing issues have shaped its consumption.

You are encouraged to explore the influence of club culture on mainstream commercial music, and the significance of symbols associated with a variety of club cultures and subcultures.

Communicating Music Through Movement & Gesture

This module explores the opportunities that exist for enhanced communication within the formal performance context, using the performer’s own physical projection of self and personal narrative of intention.

Work will also be developed in a broader context, allowing a deeper understanding of the semiotics of movement – the kinesic variables which impact upon the viewer – and the generic codes which attach to the music they play.

Ensemble

You will produce a professional standard performance, demonstrating confidence within your chosen repertoire(s) and technical and expressive maturity. You will need an appropriate balance in programming and the ability to lean towards either a supporting or leadership role and develop your skills in hosting events and presenting the work to others.

First Study

You will work on your technical development and expressive facility in performance in a bespoke way, with regular one-to-one tuition. We pride ourselves in helping you to form an excellent working relationship with your one-to-one tutor, which will enable you to identify areas for development and understand your specialist discipline with mindful awareness.

Introduction to Fundraising in the Arts

The module will consider the third-sector in relation to the other two sectors, the legal structures for non-profit organisations and regional variations in regulation, alongside the charity model in at least one other country.

Masterclass

This module develops your advanced performance and communication skills and your sense of performance context. You will develop your repertoire, your understanding of style and your skill in preparing for audition or performance.

Musical Event

You will focus on one or more major performance projects which will involve opportunities to work creatively with a variety of ensembles and collaborations, including those which cross arts disciplines. Connections will be made with current projects in other institutions and at performance venues outside the university.

Opera

This module takes a chronological approach to the study of the genre, beginning with the early Baroque and offering examples of differing musical styles up until the first half of the 20th century, with a particular focus on the late 18th to mid 19th centuries.

The relationship between narrative and the musical expression of dramatic tension will be explored.

Your lectures will make connections between the function of musical structure and form within individual works and the development of character and plot.

Orchestral Experience

Recent performance practice has seen an increased interest in the historically-informed representation of music of the 18th and 19th centuries. This module is concerned with the musical styles of the 18th and 19th centuries as explored through the performance of orchestral or other set works.

Through a combination of practical and analytical study, you will identify the major forms, writing styles and characteristics of orchestral works or other set works in performance.

Professional Resilience

This module will explore a range of different strategies designed to offer support to the emerging arts practitioner and will introduce students to a number of different models of successful self-development.

Romanticism

This module will develop your confident and probing analytical style with a close exploration of compositional intention, particularly where this is allied to programmatic or narrative elements in the models you study.

Second Study

This particular programme includes a flexible second study option, which can be chosen in order to enhance your skillset in a bespoke way.

Structures and Politics of Rock Music

You will examine a broad range of contemporary musical texts to develop a broad definition of rock culture and use an in-depth study of a selection of significant artists and groups to provide insights into a range of stylistic and structural devices employed by rock musicians.

You will learn to demonstrate the political space inhabited by their music and complete creative tasks in song-writing and collaborative composition and improvisation.