The programme integrates analysis, music history, and aural skills in a practice-based learning environment. It is taught in English and welcomes applicants from all over the world and from different musical backgrounds, including classical, jazz, folk/traditional, popular and experimental. You will study in an international group of students from multiple musical cultures and build professional networks. You will develop practical analysis skills to address real musical questions across styles, connect analysis to your ear and instrument, and apply insights to performance, pedagogy, creative work, and research.
The programme is also available part-time over three years.
What you will work on
This programme focuses on practical, musician-relevant analysis. Typical learning activities include:
- analytic methods across repertoires and styles
- aural skills integrated with music cognition, linking what you hear to how you analyse and perform
- historical approaches to analysis and their relevance today
- annual collaborative projects with performers and composers: you design the analysis, work with a chamber ensemble or a composer, and examine how analysis informs interpretation or the compositional process
- jazz analysis through arranging: you create arrangements to apply analytic ideas in practice
- tonal and modal analysis through historically informed vocal compositional practice and a hands-on keyboard method tailored to your level
- research design and methods that support a master’s project on a topic you choose. We encourage you to choose a topic you care about. Recent examples include:
- Crossover from Nordic folk music to classical string quartet arrangements
- Technology-supported music-analysis skills for mixing symphonic extreme-metal live shows
- Reviving expressive aspects of orchestral performance from the late 19th century using early 20th-century recordings
- The theory of remix and sampling
- Adapting historical improvisation techniques to contemporary piano pedagogy
- Integrating music-perception principles into harmony teaching
- Ear-training exercises as rehearsal tools in amateur wind bands
- The transition from tonality to atonality in Norwegian music
When you have completed your studies
When you complete the programme, you will have a professional profile that combines advanced analytical skills with experience collaborating with performers and composers. You will have specialised, research-based competence in music that you can use as a practitioner or musicologist in the future, enabling you to pursue various roles in music education and to continue to a PhD.
