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Master of Arts Musicology

Master of Arts – Musicology

The Master’s Degree Programme in Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz serves as an additional qualification in music education, preparing students for careers in music research, music tuition, dramaturgy, publishing, university teaching or arts management, while offering excellent preparation for a doctorate.

 The programme provides specialist training in musicology and focuses in particular on significant questions currently facing the discipline, musicology as both an area of academic research and as a means of examining the intersection of art and science. The ongoing development of key competencies in research methodology and in the communication and presentation of information (including university didactics) is a central theme across the entire course.  

Throughout, students develop and consolidate their knowledge in ways that are systematically liked to an extensive and detailed exploration of academic literature. This introduction to musicology as an academic discipline is strengthened and supported over the course of the programme by a range of related activities that contribute to the student’s grade (including conference visits, participation in methodology workshops, writing academic papers, etc.). 

General Information

  • Academic degree: Master of Music
  • Duration of degree program: 4 semesters (2 years)
  • Start of program: Winter semester
  • Degree requirements: 120 ECTS credits
  • Graduate program: doctorate

The application takes place online via the muvac platform. You can find all the information about the procedure on our Application page.

  1. A Bachelor’s Degree in musicology or a music teaching qualification for grammar schools, comprehensive schools or vocational colleges, or another equivalent qualification.
  2. A Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education, a degree programme in Instrumental Pedagogy or Bachelor’s Degree in Music Performance (here, students must have taken 12 credits’ worth of courses in musicology alongside their degree and 2 of these credits should be graded courses (i.e. not pass/fail) with a written record of performance).
  3. Another music-related course (where academic, music-related courses (including composition and music education courses) amount to 40 credits. Of these, 20 credits must be in musicology courses (and three should be graded courses (not pass/fail) with a written record of performance).
  4. For admission to the elective module “Development and Reflection in Performance Practice”, students must have completed a degree with a practical performance element.

For admission to the “Master of Arts in Musicology” programme, applicants are required to submit the following documents:

  • CV/Resume,
  • A degree certificate demonstrating completion of a relevant university course (certified copy),
  • A piece of independent, academic coursework on a topic in musicology (at least 15 pages),
  • A personal statement explaining the motivation for applying for the course.

The admissions committee, appointed by faculty members of Department 5, make admissions decisions for the programme based on these documents. The committee may decide to invite applicants to interview.

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This two-year Master’s programme enables students who have already completed a Bachelor’s Degree to enhance their academic knowledge and further develop their skills as academics.

To this end, the course takes an interdisciplinary approach to musicology in theory and practice through the following modules:

  • Historical Musicology
  • Methods in Musicology
  • Popular Music/Ethnomusicology
  • Research: either "Music – Culture - History" or "Artistic Development and Reflection"
  • Culture Studies/Media Theory
  • Knowledge Communication

In "Artistic Development and Reflection", artistic development techniques are regarded as equivalent to traditional scientific methods of knowledge acquisition and are used here to study the unique potential of the arts as a source of learning. The field of art-based research or artistic research (which

in German is perhaps most closely aligned with "Künstlerische Entwicklung und Reflexion“, the title of the module) refers to the specific structures for artistic production and performance inherent in the art forms themselves, rather than the use of traditional hermeneutic methods that view the arts – and in particular, their depiction in "texts" – as objects of scientific investigation.

Following the Master’s programme, students may continue on to doctoral studies in musicology.

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[Translate to English:]

  • Dr. Evelyn Buyken
  • PD Dr. Julian Caskel
  • Dr. Jörg Ebrecht
  • Dieter Gillesen
  • Prof. Dr. Lutz Werner Hesse
  • Prof. Dr. Arnold Jacobshagen
  • Dr. Beate Angelika Kraus
  • Prof. Dr. Sabine Meine
  • Dr. Kai Hinrich Müller
  • Prof. Dr. Hans Neuhoff
  • Prof. Dr. Rainer Nonnenmann
  • Prof. Dr. Michael Rappe