Undergraduate - Area of study Music

The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash is consistently ranked among the best music schools in Australia. It attracts students, visiting performers and academics from all over the world and has an outstanding track-record in winning competitive research funding.

The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music aims to develop a complete musician - a musician of the 21st century who is a specialist, but who is also fully equipped in a wide range of musical traditions.

Our unique approach to teaching will expose our students to a broader musical understanding. Our students will experience an education that encapsulates the diversity needed to pursue a career in music and graduate with a holistic approach to their art.

The school offers a wide-ranging undergraduate program and a variety of postgraduate degrees in performance, composition, musicology and ethnomusicology. With modern facilities, unique archival collections, scholarship opportunities and a reputation for supervision excellence, the Monash Sir Zelman School of Music is home to a vibrant, nurturing and productive environment.

Disciplines

The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music teaches, researches, and promotes public outreach in four fields of musical endeavour: performance, composition, musicology and enthnomusicology. Students specialise in one field, but gain experience in a unified way in all four areas.

Performance

Students with a strong musical aptitude undertaking this specialisation are expected to acquire an assured technique and an awareness of the history of performance style and practice. Students develop their stylistic understanding and interactive musical skills by performing in a variety of ensembles. Throughout the program students are examined on both solo and ensemble work.

Composition

Students undertaking this specialisation can expect to acquire experience and skills in music composition. The program offers supervision of students' compositional projects and encourages work in various media, including traditional, electronic, and contemporary solo and ensemble combinations. The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music organises a number of large and small instrumental and ensemble choral groups and encourages performances of student compositions.

Musicology or ethnomusicology

Students who choose either of these specialisations, or a combination of both, can expect to develop their critical thinking about music, including broadening their understanding of the role of music in society, music history, philosophical and aesthetic aspects of music, performance practice, and the music traditions of different cultures.

In the musicology stream students undertake close studies of music history, biography and historiography from various periods and from a wide variety of perspectives.

In the ethnomusicology stream, students make detailed area studies of selected music cultures of Asia and/or Africa, and may learn to perform in an Indonesian gamelan and in other Asian and African traditions as appropriate for a particular unit for which a student enrols.