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Department of Music
Faculty of Arts & Humanities

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About us

The Music Department offers high-level teaching and a flourishing research culture in performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, jazz and popular music studies. We have long-standing links with the Royal Academy of Music and the School of Oriental and African Studies.  

We welcome students from all over the world.  We teach them to engage in innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding musical experience. Our students leave us as well-rounded musicians, able to use their experience in a variety of professional contexts, and capable of critically reflecting on – and contributing to – society through music. 

We have a relatively small, selective intake of undergraduate communities, and one of the largest postgraduate communities in the country. You will meet first-rate students at different stages of their careers. The Department hosts lectures, conferences, seminars, workshops and colloquia open to the public, at which our students encounter globally recognized scholars, composers and musicians.  

The Music Department at King’s College London enjoys a close relationship with the Royal Academy of Music. All eligible undergraduate students in the Music Department receive individual instrumental/vocal tuition with teachers from the Royal Academy of Music. This provides the opportunity to combine conservatoire tuition with a university degree. Teachers are individually allocated, to ensure a close fit for each student’s needs, and a generous allowance of hours means that lessons are frequent. Instrumentalists and singers at King’s generally find many performance opportunities both at the university and in London at large. Each year, several graduating students audition successfully for postgraduate performance courses at conservatoires.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Due to the shift in remote working, phone calls will not be answered, and all enquiries should be directed to department email accounts. Enquirers can request a call-back when they email if they’d like to communicate via phone rather than email.

Find us in Room 0.12/ 0.13

+ 44 (0)20 7848 1952

Chesham Building, Chesham Building, Strand, WC2R 2LS

 

The Music Department Weekly Colloquia

Our weekly colloquia bring together leading musicologists and composers to discuss their work with our students.

Colloquium Speakers, Spring 2020, Wednesday, 16.00, SWB21- followed by discussions and drinks.

 

Katherine Schofield (King’s College London): "’If There is a Paradise on Earth’: Song, Mortality, and the Spaces Between in Mughal India"

Kate Guthrie (University of Bristol): "Outside the Ivory Tower: Wilfrid Mellers and Adult Education at the University of Birmingham (1948-1964)"

Lydia Goehr (Columbia University, New York): "Instrumentalizing Music for the Film: Pianos, Harps, and Fiddles in Backbreaking Moves of Social Labour"

Marina Romani (University of California, Berkeley): "Melodramatic Minimalism: Music and History in Guadagnino’s ‘Io sono l’amore’"

Ditlev Rindom (King’s College London): "Arcadia Undone: Teresa Carreño’s 1887 opera company in Caracas."

Arne Stollberg (Humboldt University, Berlin): "Figures of Resonance: The Eighteenth Century and Its Musical Anthropology"

James Cook (University of Edinburgh): "Hearing Historic Scotland"

Sue Miller (Leeds Beckett University): "Improvising Sabor: Cuban Dance Music in New York. New perspectives on the influence and legacy of the US charanga orquesta"

Richard Causton (University of Cambridge): "How to Make the Piano Talk: Richard Causton discusses his recent music"

Cecilia Livingston (King’s College London): TBC

 

More about the Department of Music

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Alumni

Graduating students quickly connect with professional networks in London and the wider world

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Our Connections

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People

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