Music

Entry requirements

Entry requirements vary depending on your chosen pathway. Please refer to the individual programme and pathway pages for more information.

Students who have completed up to 90 credits (not including final 60-credit projects or dissertations) of a comparable degree at another university can apply for recognition of prior learning status as part of their application for a place on the programme, where such credits are carried forward into your study at Goldsmiths.

Months of entry

September

Course content

The MA Music advances your exploration of today’s music in all its complexity. From a range of stimulating pathways, you choose one that best suits your interests. Modules are shared across pathways, and are rooted in academic and practice-based research.

The MA Music delivers core skills for academic research into music. Providing a uniquely creative approach to graduate studies, the degree accommodates diverse interests and approaches.

The programme and pathways available are:

• MA Music (General)
• Musicology (Pathway A)
• Contemporary Music Studies (Pathway B)
• Ethnomusicology (Pathway C)
• Popular Music Research (Pathway D)
• Audiovisual Cultures (Pathways E)

The MA Music equips graduates to take up careers in music such as journalism, teaching, broadcasting, librarianship, historically informed performance, contemporary composition, and arts administration. The programme’s modules explore music as an evolving subject, covering repertories from Western art music through to electronic, popular, audio-visual, non-Western, and contemporary repertories.

• You develop systematic, critical and creative approaches, exploring musical practice, discourses, and contexts.
• You develop an independent and original approach to current questions and debates.
• You explore interrelationships between music and other subjects, between theory and practice, and between performance and structural interpretation.

The MA Music is an academic rather than a practice-based degree. If you're keen to study composition or performance, please explore our MMus programme and its pathways.

Goldsmiths is ranked in the 42nd in the world for Performing Arts (QS World University Subject Rankings 2021).

Information for international students

We accept a wide range of international qualifications. Find out more about the qualifications we accept from around the world.

If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification) of 6.5 with a 6.5 in writing and no element lower than 6.0 to study this programme. If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for postgraduate-level study.

Fees and funding

To find out more about your fees, please check our postgraduate fees guidance or contact the Fees Office, who can also advise you about how to pay your fees.