About Music

Southampton has one of the largest and most diverse music programmes in the UK. We offer courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels that are designed to combine a high degree of flexibility and student choice with a solid grounding in basic skills. Students at Southampton can choose to focus on music history and analysis, performance, or composition and music technology; or they can create a rounded programme that combines elements of these and other areas such as music business and music education. This means that a Music degree from Southampton can prepare you for a variety of careers both within and outside of music: our alumni are successful in broadcasting, performance, education, academia, music therapy, composition, commercial music, and information technology, among many other fields.

The Turner Sims Concert Hall, among the best purpose-built recital halls in southern England, is located on campus and provides a centre for student musical activity. Other resources include a fine collection of early keyboard instruments as well as modern studio and music technology equipment. Opportunities for performance are plentiful, and we offer a range of vocal and instrumental scholarships for particularly talented undergraduate and postgraduate performers. We are keen to promote links between academic study and musical practice in early music and in contemporary composition and performance, including jazz and pop.

In addition to degree-related solo and ensemble performance courses, Music mounts a lively series of student and professional lunchtime concerts at the Turner Sims during term. And Southampton's Student Union sponsors a broad range of student performing groups including orchestras, vocal groups, jazz bands and theatre music ensembles. Students perform classical, popular, jazz and world musics, and we encourage openness to different idioms and styles. Our students are active in community outreach in civic, educational and therapeutic activities both within and outside the curriculum, as helpers and administrators as well as performers.

Southampton has a vibrant research culture that supports international-level scholarship across a broad spectrum of topics, including music history from the middle ages to the present, theory and analysis, issues in contemporary music and popular culture, performance research, and composition. The quality of our work was recognized through the award of a 5*A (the highest possible grade) in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, and results of the 2008 exercise, with our GPA of 3.25, put Southampton among the top three departments in the UK for music research.