Welcome to the Department of Music

We’re one of the largest music departments in the UK, offering a very broad and diverse range of courses, all taught by expert scholars. We are among the top Music departments in the UK for both our teaching and our research (placing 5th in the UK for Music in the Times Good University Guide 2022), we also benefit from a vibrant creative campus community rated 16th in the world for Performing Arts (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022).

With one of the largest postgraduate communities in the UK, we are established as one of the country's premier institutions for postgraduate education in Music.

Our research profile is of international standing, and this is reflected in the exceptionally high quality of our postgraduate provision. We were awarded the first-ever Regius Professorship in Music – the first awarded in the humanities for over a hundred years.

Our taught Masters course, the MMus in Music, is designed to allow you either to specialise in one particular area of advanced musical study such as composition, ethnomusicology, musicology, or performance or to choose a more varied set of options. Our PG Diploma in Music Performance is taught alongside the MMus and has been designed to enable students to specialise in performance and performance studies. 

Royal Holloway has excellent research facilities, including electronic resources and the largest library in the University of London. The Music department also has state-of-the-art electronic studios.

There are many opportunities for research students to work together at Royal Holloway. Doctoral students in Music participate in and lead a variety of research seminars and other specialist reading groups.

We offer postgraduate courses in: 

MMus Music

PG Dip Music Performance