MA/MRes Composition at Bath Spa University

During the Master’s in Composition, you’ll develop your skills as a composer and deepen your understanding of current artistic and professional trends in music.

You’ll be supported through weekly seminars, tutorials, and workshops with professional musicians. You’ll also work on your creative and technical skills, commenting critically on your own and others’ work.

This is a broad Music Master’s with a strong focus on experimentation within your areas of interest as a composer. Our aim is to inspire, support, and enrich your knowledge while you pursue your own unique interests. We set this against a wider consideration of current music and developments in contemporary musical thought.

We want you to graduate as a skilled composer with a deep understanding of contemporary music.

We’ll support developments in your creative practice through practical consideration of both your professional and academic skills, to help you:

• Improve the way you promote your work and plan projects
• Understand Composition as an academic discipline.

You’ll develop creative and technical skills throughout the course, alongside the ability to think critically about composition.

You’ll have opportunities to collaborate with other creative artists, such as choreographers, filmmakers and theatre practitioners, through joint projects and seminar discussion.

The MA and MRes Composition pathways offer a different emphasis. MRes Composition provides an opportunity to conduct an extended, focused composition project, combining both creative work and academic research. MA Composition provides a space to explore a wider range of approaches and to experiment with new ideas. Composers on both pathways are taught together and work with Bath Spa’s wider Music and Performance community.

Careers

You’ll develop a broad range of intellectual, practical and transferable skills. We’ll help you prepare for a portfolio career built around your creative practice, drawing in other related areas of work such as:

• Teaching
• Editing
• Performing
• Work in other areas of the creative industries.

Our aim is that when you graduate from the Composition degree, you'll have developed core problem-solving, analytical, and critical skills to support you in the ever-evolving music and composition landscape.