Music

Music as a university discipline encompasses far more than performance, engaging with the full range of musical traditions and forms of knowledge that human cultures have developed around sound. It combines aural skills and practical musicianship with music history and analysis, composition, and increasingly the technology through which music is created, recorded, and distributed. To study music seriously is to ask what it means, how it works, and why it matters to so many people across such diverse cultural contexts.

At the University of Southampton, this three-year full-time BA Music provides a broad musical education across all forms and styles, with the flexibility to specialise in areas including performance, music history, composition, and technology. You will develop your skills and experience in whichever of these areas engages you most, in a city with a vibrant cultural and music scene that provides a rich context for your studies. The programme is designed to develop the full range of skills needed for a successful career in or around music, from analytical and compositional ability to the technical and practical knowledge that professional musical contexts require.

Music graduates pursue careers across an exceptionally wide range of fields. Performance, composition, music education, music technology, arts administration, broadcasting, music journalism, the music business, and related areas of the creative industries are all common destinations. The analytical, communicative, and creative skills developed through a music degree are also valued far beyond the music sector, and many graduates work in education, publishing, the civil service, marketing, and other fields where versatile intellectual ability is an asset.

Postgraduate study in music, music technology, musicology, music education, or a professional qualification in teaching is a natural next step.