Music at Wolfson
The Cambridge Music Tripos will deepen your understanding of music and its historical and cultural context, and help you gain fundamental skills in writing and analysing music. The core of the course involves studies in history, analysis and compositional techniques.
You can find further information about studying Music on on the University's course . Detailed information is also available on the Faculty's Prospective Undergraduates .
What are we looking for?
Applicants should be acquainted with at least some of the standard repertory and have experience of writing about music. You are likely to have a good musical ear, some facility at the keyboard, and some proficiency in harmony and counterpoint.
Musicians arrive for interview with a very wide range of skills and interests. If you see yourself primarily as a performer it is important that you begin to engage with the context of the works that you play – the historical context in which they were composed, the discipline of analysis that will enable you to understand their structure and content better, or the performance history associated with them. If your musical interest is primarily academic (which is more unusual) you will need to gain some basic composition skills in traditional areas – the harmonisation of Bach chorales, the completion of two-part keyboard pieces, or the completion of string quartet extracts make good starting points.
Whatever your particular interests and skills, it is important that you learn to study independently; you will benefit most from the course in Cambridge if you are able to pursue your own lines of enquiry and interests.
Entry Requirements
Applicants for Music should ideally have an A grade at Music A level (or equivalent). Further to this no particular subjects are more desirable than others. Modern Languages and History are useful but so are virtually all other subjects, including Mathematics and sciences, in different ways. Please consult the University's for further information.
Applications
Applications to study Music at Â鶹ËÞÉáµçÊÓ¾çare submitted through UCAS. The College additionally requires the submission of written work, a separate written assessment and an online interview, as detailed below.
| Written Work | Applicants are required to submit representative written work and musical material. This should include one essay on the history or analysis of music; and one technical exercise (if studied) or your own composition. Submission deadlines can be found here. |
| Assessment | There is no written assessment. |
| Interview | Shortlisted candidates will be invited to be interviewed in December. There will be one or two interviews (in total lasting 40-50 minutes) which will be conducted online via Zoom. |
For more information about making an application, please visit our application webpages.
You can also find useful information on our Application FAQs page.