(upbeat music)
- I wanted to experience music
from an academic perspective.
- I play in different concerts.
I also conduct and compose in my spare time.
- For me, it was just the perfect balance
between a conservatoire and an academic degree.
(lively music)
- At Cambridge, the course involves a wide range
of different approaches to music.
Performance, composition, historical musicology,
ethnomusicology, and music and science.
- In the first year, you get a very broad overview
of Western art music and all the different
facets that play into it.
- By the second and the third year,
you can be studying courses from all different
areas of music history, from all around the world,
with a wide set of different approaches.
- Things like opera, like sound art,
music that we encounter every day,
hip hop, jazz, things like that,
that may not be obviously part of the kind of canon
of European art music.
- One person could specialise in performance,
another person could specialise in history,
another in analysis, another in ethnomusicology,
so that by the end of the degree,
what you've really got is your degree in music.
(upbeat music)
- The modes of teaching on the course,
first of all, lectures.
But lectures are supplemented by supervisions.
As well as those, we have small group teaching
for subjects like aural training, keyboard skills.
And we also have self-directed study and practice.
- Here at the faculty,
there are really, really first-rate resources.
- We have a concert hall, 500-seat concert hall.
We also have a recital room,
we have five lecture rooms.
- We also have grand pianos, Steinways,
to practice on, harpsichords to practice on.
- There are huge opportunities for performance,
world-class orchestras!
- From classical music and chamber choirs and jazz ensembles
to ensembles that we organise like the Indonesian
gamelan that we have, the Javanese gamelan here.
- As a musician, you can literally hire
the chapel for free or hire a hall for free
and just spend two hours conducting pieces.
- I really like to dance, so for example,
I'm dancing in an upcoming opera production.
- At the same time, a lot of students may not actually
be interested in obvious forms of musical performance,
and again, I think that's something we're trying
to really cultivate and allow for.
- One approach that we specialise in at Cambridge
is music and science, which can be field work,
it can be lab-based experiments,
it can explore a wide range of questions about music
that we can address from scientific perspectives.
(contemplative music)
- We have a computer room,
and that comes with all necessary softwares,
Logic Pro or Auralia or Sibelius,
and we also have a recording studio.
- You have your Director of Studies,
then you also have a tutor in College.
There was just so much support and so many
fail-safe nets in there.
- One of the good things about the course here
is that it equips you with all these skills
that you can then apply to different related industries.
- There's performance, there's composition,
we see students going into teaching music,
legal careers or careers in the church
or careers in the city, whatever they happen to be,
and they're using the analytical techniques,
or indeed, the argumentative techniques,
or indeed, the confidence they've got
from being performers or composers,
and taking that into a whole range of different careers.
- If you are a rapper, if you are a jazz musician,
we'd be thrilled to have you here.
That being said, also for people who have spent
their lives making Western classical music,
it's a really wonderful programme and a way to deepen
your knowledge of how that music works.
- Give it a punt and go for it,
because it really is an amazing place.
- You have nothing to lose.