History and Music

History and music are disciplines that both demand close attention to the past and the capacity to understand how human meaning is made and transmitted across time. History immerses you in the study of human societies across periods and places, developing the analytical and interpretive skills that allow you to make sense of change and continuity in political, economic, social and cultural life. Music, whether approached through performance, composition, musicology or critical analysis, adds another dimension to that engagement with the past, since the history of music is inseparable from the broader history of the cultures in which it was created.

At the University of Aberdeen, which is steeped in five hundred years of its own history, this four-year full-time programme allows you to immerse yourself in the rich study of all aspects of human adventure in the past, exploring the medieval, early modern and modern periods in Scotland, Europe, America, Asia and Africa, while simultaneously developing your musical knowledge, analytical skills and creative or performative capabilities. The combination produces graduates with an unusual range, who can move between historical inquiry and musical practice or scholarship with ease. A year abroad is built into the programme, extending your academic and personal formation.

Graduates of history and music programmes move into careers that draw on both the analytical formation of historical study and the cultural knowledge and skills of musical training. Music education, arts administration, journalism, broadcasting, heritage management, archives and library work, publishing and the cultural sector are all natural directions. The rigorous analytical and research skills that history develops transfer into law, the civil service, policy work and the communications sector.

Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in history, musicology, music education, cultural heritage or the arts more broadly, where the interdisciplinary breadth of this combination provides an unusual and distinctive foundation.