Glasgow offers a wide range of postgraduate research opportunities in Music through our MMus and PhD programmes and the School is home to a vibrant PG student community. Please click for further details.
Public Benefit
Music is an outward-facing unit: faculty are actively engaged in wider musical life and culture at regional, national and international levels. In doing so, we conceive of musical culture holistically, incorporating composition, performance, pedagogy, production, broadcasting and public debate on music.
We are a mutually supportive community of scholars and practitioners united in a spirit of enquiry and engaged in an open and democratic exchange of ideas across both theory and practice and teaching and research.
This community has been recognised as the leading centre of musical research in Scotland in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. 65% of the Research Output from Glasgow was classified as world-leading or Internationally Excellent.
See the Research Assessment Exercise results for Music.
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Our musicology research engages with a number of historical and cultural themes, particularly modernity in musical culture.
| Musicological method, historiography and criticism, systematic musicology | John Butt, Bill Sweeney, David Code, Martin Dixon, David McGuinness, Eva Moreda-Rodriguez |
| Philosophy and Aesthetics of music | Martin Dixon, John Butt, Bill Sweeney, David Code, Björn Heile |
| Performance practice and cultures of performance | John Butt, Bill Sweeney, David McGuinness |
| Explorations of modernity and modernism, twentieth-century music | Martin Dixon, David Code, Bill Sweeney, John Butt, Björn Heile, Eva Moreda-Rodriguez |
| Seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth- century studies | John Butt, Bill Sweeney, David Code, David McGuinness |
| Scottish music | David McGuinness, Bill Sweeney |
| Spanish music & culture | Eva Moreda-Rodriguez |
| Music in popular culture | Bill Sweeney, Martin Dixon, Martin Cloonan, David McGuinness |
| Music and politics | Martin Cloonan, Eva Moreda-Rodriguez, John Williamson |
| Music and violence | Martin Cloonan |
| Music industries | Martin Cloonan, John Williamson |
Our creative work can be divided into three broad areas of practice and within these a number of research themes emerge.
| COMPOSITION | |
|---|---|
| Modernism in composition | Nick Fells, Martin Dixon, Bill Sweeney, Jane Stanley |
| Experimental Music | Martin Dixon, Nick Fells |
| Electroacoustic and intermedia composition | Nick Fells, Bill Sweeney |
| Jazz and Gaelic influences | Bill Sweeney |
| Intercultural aspects of composition | Nick Fells, Bill Sweeney |
| Improvisation | Nick Fells, Martin Dixon, Bill Sweeney, David McGuinness |
| Music and Moving Image | Bill Sweeney, Nick Fells, David McGuinness |
New for 2012 - composer workshops with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
The RSNO will be offering a series of workshops with a sinfonietta sized ensemble starting in November 2012, specifically for postgraduate composition students, leading to possible performance opportunities. This will provide a supportive professional context in which our postgraduate composers can develop their work, and will complement existing ensemble workshop opportunities with groups such as the Viridian Quartet and the student-led contemporary music ensemble.
| PERFORMANCE | |
|---|---|
| Historically informed performance | John Butt, Bill Sweeney, David McGuinness |
| Contemporary music practices | Nick Fells, Bill Sweeney, David McGuinness |
| SONIC ARTS & MUSIC TECHNOLOGY | |
|---|---|
| Sound manipulation and spatialisation in performance | Nick Fells |
| Tools for composition and performance | Nick Fells, Nick Bailey |
| Music, technology and disability | Nick Fells |
| Computationally supported performance studies | Nick Bailey |
| Music information representation, storage and retrieval | Nick Bailey |
| Broadcasting & the recording industry | David McGuinness |
A number of projects and networks are run within the School. Many of these are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
- A Social History of the Musicians' Union (AHRC funded)
- Bass Culture in Scottish Musical Traditions (AHRC funded)
- Music of Scotland
- Political Song Archive
- Researching Live Music in the UK (and the follow up project Live Music Exchange)
- Scottish Music Review
- Scottish Pop Academic Network (SPAN)
- The Use of Audiovisual Resources in Jazz Historiography and Scholarship: Performance, Embodiment and Mediatised Representations
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Music hosts a series of colloquia on behalf of the Royal Musical Association featuring national and international guest speakers, along with staff and postgraduate students. All sessions are open to the public, a warm welcome is extended to all.
All talks take place at 5:15 pm in Room 2 (first floor), 14 University Gardens.
| SEMESTER 1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Wed Oct 3 | Paul Newland (Oxford Brookes University; Guildhall School; Trinity Laban Conservatoire) | ‘Chance and Formality—Imperfection and Incompleteness’ |
| Wed Oct 24 | Professor Bill Sweeney (University of Glasgow) | ‘The Gentle Art of Self-Quotation’: A Seminar, inviting response to materials provided in advance. |
| Sat Nov 10 | Special event, hosted by David J. Code (University of Glasgow) ‘Envoicing the Other’, a Symposium (10am-5pm) and Concert (6pm), to Honour the 150th anniversary of the birth of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and the 75th anniversary of the death of Maurice Ravel (1874-1937) | |
| Wed Nov 14 | Allan Moore (University of Surrey) | CANCELLED - Replacement tbc |
| Wed Nov 28 | Sarah Hibberd (University of Nottingham) | ‘Painting as Opera: Bringing Art to Life in 1830s Paris’ |
| SEMESTER 2 | ||
| Wed Jan 16 | Tony Myatt (University of Surrey) | 'Colonising Audio Space' |
| Wed Jan 30 | Bettina Varwig (King’s College, London) | ‘Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach's Passions’ |
| Wed Feb 13 | Holly Rogers (University of Liverpool) | ‘Poetic Realism: Documentary Film Soundtracks and the Search for an Objective Voice’ |
| Wed Feb 27 | Martin Cloonan and John Williamson (University of Glasgow) | ‘Researching the History of the Musicians Union: Some initial findings’ |
| Wed Mar 13 - Fri Mar 15 |
Cramb Residency: Professors Katherine Bergeron and Joseph Butch Rovan (Brown University). | |