Bachelor of Music

Number of students per year: 4-6

Typical offer: A*AA or 7,7,6 (42+ overall) in the IB or the equivalent in other educational systems.

Essential subjects: One subject must be Music (not Music Technology), except for applicants with Grade VIII theory (ABRSM). A basic knowledge of harmony, counterpoint and analytical skills, such as can be studied at A-level, is a distinct advantage.

Written assessment: Candidates will be asked to sit an hour-long paper during their visit to Cambridge. There will be one question, the harmonization of a melody in a free style (i.e not necessarily in four parts) or the completion of the lower three parts of a Bach chorale. NB Please note that a keyboard will not be available for this paper.

The Cambridge Music Tripos is intended to deepen your understanding of music and its historical and cultural context, and to help you gain fundamental skills in writing and analysing music. The core of the course involves studies in history, analysis and compositional techniques. During your three years you will have an increasing amount of free choice in the subjects you study, as well as the opportunity to explore aspects of music that will probably be unfamiliar, such as notation and ethnomusicology. Although many music students at Cambridge want to enter the music profession in one guise or another, the course provides a broad education for those who take up other occupations.

Clare College is the second oldest of Cambridge’s thirty-one colleges (its foundation having been anticipated, among surviving institutions, only by Peterhouse). It was founded in 1326 and generously endowed a few years later by Lady Elizabeth de Clare (Lady de Burgh), a granddaughter of King Edward I (1272-1307).

Clare College was the first of the Oxford and Cambridge foundations to provide for a Master, Fellows, and Scholars in a single community. It remains today a society of teachers and students brought together by a common interest in learning, teaching, and research. The College has 95 Fellows, 300 graduate students, and approximately 460 students following undergraduate or professional courses.