Composition MA

Course description

This MA is a dynamic environment for you to explore and develop your own creative voice in contemporary composition, whether your passion is instrumental composition, electronic/electroacoustic composition, music for film, music for games, or a mix of them all.

If you choose to study instrumental composition, you’ll explore a broad range of approaches and techniques that have a strong emphasis on inquiry-led practice. There will be numerous opportunities for live premieres of your work.

The pathway in electronic/electroacoustic composition allows you to explore creative applications of analogue and digital technologies, studio-based composition techniques, and real-time audio processing techniques. You’ll reflect on topics such as the aesthetics of sonic art, historical developments in electronic music, temporal and spatial-audio, and post-digital aesthetics.

In addition, your MA will give you the training you need to pursue collaborations, for example with local film makers and game artists. The course is designed to facilitate your route into the creative industries as a composer, sound designer or game contributor. To help you further prepare for life as a composer, we’ll encourage you to form adventurous cross-disciplinary partnerships and work with a variety of venues, including concert halls, galleries, museums or media outlets.

You’ll have the chance to develop your skills at the start of the course through intensive training and, after that, to become increasingly independent with your research and the topics you’d like to explore.

By the end of the course, you’ll have developed and refined your own compositional voice and you’ll able to situate your creative work within a broader contextual framework. Either way, the course will help you launch yourself as a professional composer or continue on to further academic studies.