Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

+44 121 414 5668

Undergraduate programs

Bachelor of Arts (Hons). Three years. Music studies include performance, composition, musicology. Music with a second subject area. Bachelor of Music (Hons). Three years. Specialisation in performance (classical, jazz, early music, music theatre, contemporary), choral conducting, composition, musicology.

Graduate programs

Master of Arts. in performance, performance practice, choral conducting, composition, musicology, global popular musics, sonic arts. Doctor of Philosophy.

Sir Edward Elgar was appointed the university’s first professor of music in 1905. The university has a department of drama and theatre arts, enabling music students to take courses in drama and to participate in opera and music theatre. Performance tuition is normally taken at the Birmingham Conservatoire with which there is a close relationship. All undergraduate students receive a scholarship for lessons on two instruments. The new Bramall Music Building houses practice rooms, electroacoustic music studios, computer workstations and the Elgar Concert Hall and library. A program of health and wellness for musicians is available. The library has a research collection of original 17th and 18th century sources, including the Shaw-Hellier collection of mid-18th century Handel prints and manuscripts, the Granville Bantock collection and the Elgar diaries, manuscript scores and early editions as well as the Archive of Seventeenth-century Italian Madrigals and Arias. There is a Centre for Early Music Performance and Research founded in 1998, and a working collection of period instruments. The Barber Institute holds an annual Birmingham Early Music Festival and the Barber Festival of Contemporary Music. The Centre for Composition and Associated Studies forms the focal point for all activities related to contemporary music. Facilities include a state-of-the-art electroacoustic music studio and the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Music Studios.

September 2022