Research Clusters
Research in music at Cambridge is renowned both nationally and internationally, as demonstrated in the results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, in which 45 per cent of our submitted research was judged to be world-leading, with a further 40 per cent assessed as internationally excellent. While much of our work is the outcome of individual scholarship, we also host two world-leading centres of collaborative research: the Centre for Music and Science, and the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice. These are complemented by a research infrastructure of international significance, including the Pendlebury Library and University Library as well as important College collections. See our Research Resources for further information about some of these collections.
One way to categorise our work is in terms of such broad areas of activity as composition, historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and science and music; the first two of these have been at the centre of the Faculty’s intellectual and musical life throughout its history, while the latter two have become prominent within the Faculty more recently. At the same time a number of common concerns or themes cut across these divisions, among them music before 1600, nineteenth-century music, opera studies, popular and media music, cultural musicology, theory and analysis, and performance studies. You can find out about what we do in more detail by exploring the individual publication lists under Academic Staff.
As one of the UK’s leading centres for advanced studies in music, with a range of Masters and PhD programmes, we support graduate research in all these fields. See Graduate Admissions for further details.
All music study is creative in some way, but Creative Practice specialists blend artistic production and reflection in ways that give precedence to the ‘arts’ and ‘performance’ sides of music study. Cambridge’s team offers exceptional variety, with pioneering work in Performance Studies complementing dynamic work in acoustic composition, sound composition, and documentary film-making.
Early Music has long had a prominent place in Cambridge’s musical life. Faculty research represents some of the newest intellectual and performance-based trends, ranging from reconstruction of lost music, notation, studies of bodily and sensory engagement in early-music listening, and medieval cultures of pastness and ritual.
Ethnomusicology, Popular Music and Sound Studies
Our ethnomusicological work routinely crosses disciplinary borders. Music as a fundamental musical behaviour is explored bioculturally, historically, and via cutting-edge approaches such as sensory ethnomusicology. Projects with refugees and on musicians from historically marginalised groups bring an urgent political dimension to some of our work in this area.
While history is at the core of much of musicology, the field has traditionally focused exclusively on Europe and North America. Meanwhile, ethnomusicology has mostly focused on the present and relatively recent past. But the musical and auditory histories of cultures outside Europe and North America, as well as Indigenous cultures within those geographies, is increasingly integral to music research at Cambridge.
Cambridge’s Centre for Music and Science has since its foundation in 2003 led research in the empirical study of music as a fundamental human behaviour, and acts as a hub for a vibrant community of resident and visiting scholars. Our research expertise in this area also spans the history of technologies of sound and listening, and cutting-edge projects in digital musicology.
Our Faculty has arguably the highest concentration of nineteenth-century music specialists in any single UK university. Opera Studies in Italian, French, German, Russian and transnational contexs lie at the heart of much of what we do; we are also rich in analysis expertise, in aesthetics and philosophy, and in cultural history.
Our expertise in twentieth-century studies brings together researchers whose musicological roots collectively extend back to the nineteenth century, giving the Cambridge team a uniquely wide-angle view of historical transformation in Russia, France and Spain particularly. Work on jazz, modernist and traditional musics alike overlays chronological sweep with significant generic depth.