Music

Practical Music

Musical life at Fitzwilliam is active, varied and stimulating. There are opportunities for all students both to participate in and to listen to music of a high standard and in a diverse range of styles. Fitzwilliam College Music Society organises frequent concerts and provides musical opportunities for all members of the College, whatever their musical tastes or level of accomplishment. Fitzwilliam has a thriving Chapel Choir which performs concerts in Cambridge and further afield as well as singing regular Sunday services. College musicians regularly join with performers from nearby Robinson, Murray Edwards (formerly New Hall), Churchill, Magdalene and Girton colleges in intercollegiate groups such as Orchestra on the Hill and the new music group Ensemble CB3. Each autumn there is a music Festival at Fitzwilliam, comprising concerts, lectures and workshops, to mark the anniversary of a significant composer; this year we mark the 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth. 2009 also sees the formation of the Fitzwilliam Baroque Ensemble.

College music benefits greatly from the frequent involvement of professional musicians, particularly the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, who were founded at the College in 1969 and have since achieved an international reputation; the Quartet returns to College each term to give concerts and to work with student performers and ensembles. Their concerts form part of the Fitzwilliam Chamber Series, an annual season of professional concerts held in the College's acclaimed Auditorium. The Quartet have also formed the nucleus of the orchestra for Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera, the only college-based opera group in Cambridge, which gave its inaugural production of Handel's Xerxes in November 2007, and most recently performed Monteverdi's Orfeo in the ADC Theatre, Cambridge.

Fitzwilliam is also home to two long-established a capella ensembles, Fitz Barbershop and Fitz Sirens, and is the base of the acclaimed Cambridge University 'Fitz' Swing Band.

DIstinguished Fitzwilliam music alumni include conductor David Atherton OBE, musicologists Dr Alan Brown and Professor Mervyn Cooke, writer and broadcaster Humphrey Burton CBE, violinists Roger Garland and Nicholas Dowding, violist Martin Outram, bass Matthew Waldren, jazz pianist Colin Purbrook, opera director John Ramster, songwriter Nick Drake, composer Nicholas Marshall and recorder player John Turner.

Studying Music

Two or three students are normally admitted to read for the Music Tripos every year; an Organ Scholar (who may or may not read Music) is elected in every other year. Students reading Music are taught through formal lectures in the Music Faculty, and through Supervisions - held either on a one-to-one basis for subjects requiring individual attention (such as Harmony and Counterpoint), or in groups of two or three where broader discussion is beneficial (History, Analysis and so forth). These weekly sessions are designed to support and complement the lectures, and the Faculty also provides practical classes in Aural skills and Keyboard Harmony. The weekly sessions are organised and taught by a team of supervisors appointed by the Director of Studies in Music which may include a mixture of senior faculty members, external supervisors and postgraduate students whose area of research is related to the topic or paper being supervised. The College has a well-stocked collection of musical scores and textbooks in the Library.

    For details of the Music Tripos at Fitzwilliam, see /academic/courses/music
    The course structure can be found on the Music Faculty website at http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/external/coursesapplications/undergradadmissions.html
    University-wide music scholarship information is at http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/musicawards/

Contact

For all enquiries about music at Fitzwilliam, please contact the Director of Music, Francis Knights, on music@fitz.cam.ac.uk or 01223 477339.