Music

Our course covers a broad range of music, from medieval plainchant to the blues, and a great range of approaches to thinking about and understanding music, from advanced analysis to the study of music and science.

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Overview

The course information on this page is for 2024 entry. Details for 2025 entry will be published in March 2024.

Music at Cambridge

Over recent decades many of the most significant figures in British music have studied or taught at Cambridge: composers such as Judith Weir, Errollyn Wallen, Thomas Adès and Academy Award-winning film composer, Steven Price; performers like Joanna MacGregor and Mark Padmore; conductors including John Eliot Gardiner and Nicholas Collon; writers and broadcasters, including Sara Mohr-Pietsch (Radio 3) and crossover artists such as Delia Derbyshire and Clean Bandit.

Our undergraduate course has a strong academic component, particularly focusing on history, analysis, composition (including screen and media composition) and performance, but also offering a range of other topics (see the course outline).

Facilities and resources

As well as providing a location for lectures, seminars and research activities, the modern Faculty building also houses:

a professional concert hall (seating 500)
an extensive library of music, books, periodicals and recordings
a purpose-built studio
music computing laboratories

The Faculty also houses the Centre for Music Performance.

Students can borrow period instruments and make use of the Faculty’s Javanese gamelan, and the Faculty organises a weekly Composers’ Workshop, and regular Practising Performance Masterclasses that are open to all students.

In addition, the Faculty hosts several resident ensembles (the New Music Ensemble, Collegium Musicum, Britten Sinfonia, and The Academy of Ancient Music), which perform regularly and offer masterclasses, coaching and further composition workshops for students.

These facilities and resources are complemented by the University Library and by the libraries, practice rooms and computer suites available in Colleges. College funds are available for instrumental or vocal lessons for those taking a performance paper. Support varies between Colleges – please request details from individual Colleges.

Course costs

Tuition fees

Information on tuition fee rates for Music is available on the tuition fees page.

Additional course costs

There are no compulsory additional course costs. Students taking performance options will require instrumental/vocal teaching, for which financial support is guaranteed through the Colleges at the following minimum levels: Year 1 - £420;Year 2 - £540; Year 3 - £700.

Music books and scores are available in the libraries in Cambridge (in the Faculty, Colleges, and/or University Library). Students may purchase their own copies of some books and study scores to have to hand when needed, but this is not compulsory Fieldwork may be undertaken by students, typically in support of dissertations in Years 2 and 3, but this remains optional. Limited financial support is usually available through Colleges for purchases or fieldwork.

Changing course

Though it is possible to take another subject after either one or two years of studying Music, transfer into Part IB or II of the Tripos is unusual and subject to satisfaction of the Faculty Board of Music that the requisite skills in Music have been obtained.

To be able to change course, you need the agreement of your College that any change is in your educational interests, and you must have the necessary background in the subject to which you wish to change – in some cases you may be required to undertake some catch-up work or take up the new course from the start/an earlier year. If you think you may wish to change course, we encourage you to contact a College admissions office for advice. You should also consider if/how changing course may affect any financial support arrangements.

Careers

Music graduates are extremely attractive to employers and can follow a career in a wide range of fields thanks to the transferable skills they acquire on our course. In recent years, graduates have pursued successful careers in publishing and the media, academia, arts administration, banking, law, public service and the charity sector.

Many of our students do enter the music profession in one guise or another. Recent graduates include pianist Tom Poster, Royal Harpist Anne Denholm, composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, jazz musician Misha Mullov-Abbado, and record producer and audio engineer Myles Eastwood.

Course outline

Teaching is provided through lectures, seminars, supervisions, workshops and masterclasses. In your first year, you can typically expect to have four lectures, three supervisions, and aural and practical musicianship classes each week. In later years, lectures decrease to make way for more seminar, small-group and one-to-one teaching.

You can also work with individual staff members on your own projects, whether as an advanced performer, composer, historian, analyst, ethnomusicologist or music scientist. In this way, while our course gives you the solid understanding of the subject which a music degree should guarantee, it also offers you the flexibility you need to prepare for life after Cambridge.

Assessment takes place at the end of each year through written examinations; the submission of portfolios, compositions, essays and dissertations; and through recitals.

Year 1 (Part IA)

The first year consists of compulsory papers in three major areas, and two half-papers chosen from a range of options. These papers provide a secure and interconnected foundation for your further study. You take:

historical and critical studies – two papers covering issues involved in understanding music and its relationship to society and culture. These include studying historical topics in Western music and thinking broadly about the place of music in contemporary societies (world music, popular music, new music)
tonal skills and general musicianship – one and a half papers giving you a thorough technical grounding in music of the Western tonal tradition, through writing music in a range of historical styles, aural work, and the acquisition of basic practical skills
music analysis – a paper that gives you an understanding of what makes music work. You will study different approaches to analysing a broad range of music
two half papers chosen from the following: extended essay, performance, composition, music historiography

Year 2 (Part IB)

You take a further paper in each of the core Part IA areas (historical studies, analysis and applied tonal skills). Subject to Faculty approval, you can replace one of these papers with an option.

You then choose three more papers from a range of different topics. Subjects change from year to year but normally include:

in-depth historical topics
jazz, popular music and media
ethnomusicology
notation
keyboard skills
music and science
performance studies (including recital)
composition
a dissertation of 5,000-7,000 words

Year 3 (Part II)

In the final year, you have even more choice. There are no compulsory papers – you choose six papers from a wide selection of options which reflect your own interests and which may also develop the skills and knowledge needed for your chosen career path. Options available vary each year but recent examples include:

advanced performance
advanced performance skills (keyboard or choral)
a dissertation of 7,000-10,000 words
composition
Beethoven: the Late String Quartets
Musical Countercultures of the 1960s
Exploring Music Psychology
Parisian Polyphony
Music, Nationalism and Politics in Spain
Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem in Context
Decolonising the Ear

For further information about studying Music at the University of Cambridge see the Faculty of Music website.

Entry requirements

Entry Requirements

This page details the standard entry requirements for this course. Check the document below for any variations between Colleges (some may ask for an A* in a particular subject for example):

PDF icon Music entry requirements by College for 2024 entry

Typical offers require

A Level: A*AA
IB: 40-42 points, with 776 at Higher Level
Other qualifications: See Entrance requirements.

Subject requirements

All Colleges require: A Level/IB Higher Level Music (ABRSM Grade 8 Theory at Merit and above may be accepted as a substitute if A Level Music is not one of the three subjects taken)

See Entrance requirements and Choosing your post-16 subjects for additional guidance and conditions of entry.

Admission assessment

Some Colleges may require applicants for Music to take a written assessment if shortlisted for interview. You will not need to register in advance for this assessment and the Colleges will provide details directly to you.

There's no common format written assessment for Music. Colleges will assess aptitude, knowledge base and potential through tasks at the time of interview. Your performance in the assessment will not be considered in isolation, but will be taken into account alongside the other elements of your application.

Please see individual College websites for details of which Colleges require applicants to take an assessment and the expected format of that assessment.

See Admission assessment for further details.

Submitted work

Applicants to all Colleges are required to submit representative written work and musical material prior to interview. This will normally include one or two essays on the history or analysis of music; and one or two technical exercises (if studied) and/or your own compositions.

All undergraduate admissions decisions are the responsibility of the Cambridge Colleges. Please contact the relevant College admissions office if you have any queries.

Typical Music entrants (A Level and IB)

For 2017, 2018 and 2019 entry, the majority of entrants from an A Level background achieved at least grades A*AA. These successful students applicants typically took Music (95% of entrants). Other common subjects were Mathematics (58%), English (Language, Language & Literature, or Literature, 27%), History (24%) and a language (39%). For the same period, the majority of IB entrants achieved at least 42 points overall and/or grades 776 at Higher Level.

This information is intended to give you a sense of the academic standard of our typical A Level entrants. We welcome applicants from a range of qualification backgrounds.

Resources

Find out more about Music at Cambridge

Faculty of Music - Explore Music in more detail on the faculty website.

The Cambridge Music Course - Information on the Cambridge degree.

How We Teach - How the Music course is taught.

Careers - Where the Music course at Cambridge can lead.

Outreach Events - Outreach events on offer from the Faculty of Music.

Facilities - Facilities at the Faculty of Music.

The Musical Environment - Information on groups and societies that provide a huge range of opportunities for musical performance and appreciation in Cambridge.

Resources for Students - Further reading and resources for students preparing to study Music at Cambridge.

HE+ Resources - For 6th Form students who want to further their interest in the study of Music.

Discover Uni

Discover Uni data

Contextual information

Discover Uni allows you to compare information about individual courses at different higher education institutions. This can be a useful method of considering your options and what course may suit you best.

However, please note that superficially similar courses often have very different structures and objectives, and that the teaching, support and learning environment that best suits you can only be determined by identifying your own interests, needs, expectations and goals, and comparing them with detailed institution- and course-specific information.

We recommend that you look thoroughly at the course and University information contained on these webpages and consider coming to visit us on an Open Day, rather than relying solely on statistical comparison.

You may find the following notes helpful when considering information presented by Discover Uni.

Discover Uni relies on superficially similar courses being coded in the same way. Whilst this works on one level, it may lead to some anomalies. For example, Music courses and Music Technology courses can have exactly the same code despite being very different programmes with quite distinct educational and career outcomes.

Any course which combines several disciplines (as many courses at Cambridge do) tends to be compared nationally with courses in just one of those disciplines, and in such cases the Discover Uni comparison may not be an accurate or fair reflection of the reality of either. For example, you may find that when considering a degree which embraces a range of disciplines such as biology, physics, chemistry and geology (for instance, Natural Sciences at Cambridge), the comparison provided is with courses at other institutions that primarily focus on just one (or a smaller combination) of those subjects.You may therefore find that not all elements of the Cambridge degree are represented in the Discover Uni data.

Some contextual data linked from other surveys, such as the National Student Survey (NSS) or the Destination of Leavers in Higher Education (DLHE), may not be available or may be aggregated across several courses or several years due to small sample sizes. When using the data to inform your course choice, it is important to ensure you understand how it has been processed prior to its presentation. Discover Uni offers some explanatory information about how the contextual data is collated, and how it may be used, which you can view here: https://discoveruni.gov.uk/about-our-data/.

Discover Uni draws on national data to provide average salaries and employment/continuation data. Whilst starting salaries can be a useful measure, they do not give any sense of career trajectory or take account of the voluntary/low paid work that many graduates undertake initially in order to gain valuable experience necessary/advantageous for later career progression. Discover Uni is currently piloting use of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data to demonstrate possible career progression; it is important to note that this is experimental and its use may be modified as it embeds.

The above list is not exhaustive and there may be other important factors that are relevant to the choices that you are making, but we hope that this will be a useful starting point to help you delve deeper than the face value of the Discover Uni data.

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Music at Cambridge

Facilities and resources

Course costs

Tuition fees

Additional course costs

Changing course

Careers

Course outline

Year 1 (Part IA)

Year 2 (Part IB)

Year 3 (Part II)

Entry Requirements

Typical offers require

Subject requirements

Admission assessment

Submitted work

Typical Music entrants (A Level and IB)

Find out more about Music at Cambridge

Discover Uni data

Contextual information

Course Film

Music at Cambridge

Fact File

Cambridge Admissions Office

About this site

Information for

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge