Music with Integrated Foundation Year

Music study at degree level encompasses both the performance and making of music and the intellectual frameworks through which we understand it as a cultural and historical practice. It develops your musicianship, your ability to compose and arrange, your understanding of music theory and analysis, and your engagement with the history of music from the medieval period to the present. A music degree asks you to listen more carefully, to understand more precisely how musical structures create their effects, and to situate music within its social, historical, and aesthetic contexts.

At Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, this four-year full-time BMus includes an integrated foundation year for students who are passionate about music but who want to build their confidence and skills before entering the main degree. The foundation year combines humanities learning with hands-on music training, providing a gradual and supported transition into university-level music study. The main degree programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities, meaning you will have significant structured professional and international experience alongside your academic and musical development.

You will develop as a performer, composer, or analyst, engaging with a broad curriculum that spans traditional and contemporary repertoires and develops both practical and intellectual musicianship.

Music graduates pursue an enormous variety of careers. Many work as performers, conductors, composers, music producers, or music teachers, pursuing the vocational paths that led them to study music in the first place. Others move into arts administration, music publishing, broadcasting, music journalism, music therapy, and community music.

The analytical, creative, and communication skills developed by a music degree are also valued in roles well beyond the music industry, including teaching, marketing, arts technology, and the civil service. Postgraduate study in performance, composition, musicology, or music technology is available for those who wish to specialise, and many musicians continue their training at conservatoires alongside or following their undergraduate degrees.