Located within a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Music Department at the University of Durham provides historic, inspiring, and world-leading training for a life within and beyond music.
PATHWAYS
Studying Music at Durham (on the BA Mus course) is a stimulating and wide-ranging undertaking that leaves no stone unturned. As a student in your first year, there are 6 compulsory modules (Analysis, Composition, Ethnomusicology, History, Performance, and Techniques). These serve to equip you with the foundational tools for creating and understanding music across genres and throughout time, that can then be pursued further in the form of optional modules in years two and three.
ANALYSIS
Key concepts of Baroque and Classical styles underpin the first year and serve as a point of departure as your progress throughout your degree. The specific focus of second- and third-year modules can change from year to year, but in recent years have centred around the music of Beethoven and Stravinsky, the power of the symphony, and new directions in time and rhythm.
COMPOSITION
Composition is the domain which tends to take students by the most surprise when they arrive at Durham! The ‘new’ approaches of composers such as Messiaen and Shostakovich featured in A-Level and IB syllabi are blown apart upon hearing the indeterminism of Cage and Feldman, the spectralism of Grisey and Murail, and the New Complexity of Ferneyhough and Finnissy. Students are challenged to write for instruments that they are unaccustomed, as well as encouraged to push what it possible on the instrument(s) they call their own.
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
From Australian didgeridoo to Balinese gamelan, Brazilian samba, Central African pygmy, Chinese guqin, Japanese shakuhachi, and Zimbabwean mbira, you can study them all at Durham. The ethnomusicology modules provide a rigorous approach to understanding the variety of musical practices and concepts encountered around the world, introducing you to diverse methods of describing, notating, and recording music that departs from what we might usually hear on a daily basis.
HISTORY
A broad introduction to Western music from the seventeenth to the twentieth century in first year is followed by optional and specific explorations, such as ‘Music and Politics in France’ and ‘Music in Italy 1850-1950’, as you progress through your degree. Many students use the history modules in first- and second-year to shape the dissertations that they will write in their final year. Accordingly, the breadth of musical options available at Durham is balanced by the opportunity to develop your specific interests over the course of the degree.
PERFORMANCE
While it is never compulsory for reticent students to have to perform in front of other students (and can ‘drop’ performance after their first year), eager performers are never short of performance opportunities at Durham – whether these are ‘in class’, for college/departmental recital series, or as part of the immense number of ensembles across the city. Over 30 music societies exist and cater for students interested in A Capella, choral singing, classical, jazz, pop, rock, stage, and world music. There is also financial support for performance tuition throughout the degree.
TECHNIQUES
The ‘bane’ of some students time at Durham(!) but also the secret love of many others, the ‘Musical Techniques’ modules offer rigorous training in Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint, four-part harmony, the composition of Classical forms, orchestration, etc. Unlike some other universities, these modules are mostly optional, and teaching is often provided in small groups and on a 1-to-1 basis, giving students relatively unrivalled opportunities to learn from world experts but at their own pace.
FACILITIES
Colleges aside (which all provide chapels, practice rooms, and performance spaces), the Music Department caters for the full spectrum of acoustic and electronic interests among its students, giving them the opportunity to use these at their leisure. Facilities include, but are not limited to, a Concert Room (two storeys of seating, 5:1 sound system, large Genelec loudspeakers, AV facilities, large projection screen), Lecture Room (high-quality stereo sound system, AV facilities), Music Technology Suite (Mac and Windows OS audio workstations, music technology software, resident technical support), Practice rooms (soundproofed, acoustically treated, Steinway grand pianos, digital pianos, drum kits, bass and guitar amps, PAs), Studios (music production equipment spanning from the early analogue era up to current technologies and computer-based software), Recording Studio (soundproofed, acoustically treated, state-of-the-art equipment), Audio-visual Documentation and Analysis Laboratory (for multi-camera and multi-track audio editing), and Music and Science Lab (portable physiology response kits, electroencephalography system, recording and playback equipment, audience response capture devices, acoustically controlled listening environment).
RANKINGS
In recent years, the Music Department at the University of Durham has been ranked as the best in the country and is consistently ranked as one of the best in the world. In 2024, it placed 6th in the Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide and 6th in the Complete University Guide.
CONTACT THINK TUTORS
Organising tuition or mentoring with one of Think Tutors’ elite tutors or mentors who has studied at Durham is an excellent way to gain an advantage in the application process for university. We enhance performance through careful preparation and confidence building, offering guidance on Durham colleges, crafting personal statements, submitting musical work, and more, leaving no stone unturned. Please contact us to find a tutor to help your child enter the Music Department at the University of Durham.