Study Music at the Open University

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Study Music at the Open University

Studying music at the OU allows you to explore an immense range of musical styles and practices.

Open University Music modules cover an immense range of musical styles and practices, offering you the opportunity to engage with music from the medieval period to the present day, and from Handel, Schumann and Bruckner to film scores, jazz and Joni Mitchell. You can study for an undergraduate degree with a concentration in music, an MA in music or a PhD on a research topic of your choice.

01/09/2026

Since news of Dolly Parton’s death last week, the tributes have mostly agreed on one thing: everybody loved Dolly.

Marie Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at The Open University, has written for The Conversation about something more complicated underneath that.
Parton built her career inside a genre with fixed ideas about how women should sound, look and behave — and spent six decades working within it while steadily refusing most of its rules.

Marie looks at what that took, what it changed for the women who came after her, and why the universal affection for Dolly has never quite extended to country music itself.

Read it on The Conversation — “Dolly Parton changed country music by refusing to play by its rules.”

The Conversation UK The Open University

20/08/2026

Congratulations to every student collecting GCSE results today 🎉 Whatever your grades are remember to be proud of what got you here.

It's a bittersweet day for music, though since A-level music entries have hit a record low, and over a third of schools in England no longer offer GCSE music at all. For too many young people, the chance to keep studying music just isn't there by sixth form.

That's why we do things differently. The Open University is one of the few places in the UK where you can study for an undergraduate music degree without having taken A-level music. School band, church choir, home studio, years of self-taught playing — however your musicianship was built, we want to hear from you.

Because music isn't a curriculum afterthought. It's one of the most fundamental expressions of what it means to be human.

14/07/2026

Byron Dueck received OpenARC funding for ethnographic fieldwork in Yaoundé, Cameroon, for his monograph The Portable Xylophone.

It's a book that follows xylophonists, their instruments, and their music across the social spaces of central Cameroon, where xylophone ensemble music is heard at weddings, funerals, in cabarets, as pop music via mass media, and as liturgical music in the Catholic mass.

Watch Byron's presentation from the OpenARC Spring Festival on our YouTube. Link in comments.

10/07/2026

A new government proposal to remove Price Group C1.2 funding for higher education music provision has prompted serious concern from across the sector. The decision risks undermining the pipeline of skilled musicians, educators, researchers and creative professionals needed for the UK’s cultural an...

07/07/2026

This week's listen: Palestrina, Sicut cervus (published 1604).

Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus.
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God.

Just four voices, unaccompanied, and barely three minutes long. It is one of Palestrina's most loved motets, often held up as a model of Renaissance polyphony. Nothing about it is showy. Palestrina sets the text mostly one note per syllable, so the Latin stays clear and intelligible as a direct response to the church reforms of his time, which wanted sacred music to serve the words, not bury them.

But listen closely and there's real artistry in the restraint. On the word "desiderat"/ "longs", the melody quickens and rises, reaching its peak on "fontes," the streams themselves. It's word-painting at its most subtle: the music physically reaching toward the thing it describes.

The text was traditionally sung at the blessing of the water on Holy Saturday, tying the deer's thirst to the waters of baptism.

More than 400 years later in a more secular society it still captures the universal sensation of longing for something just out of reach.

What should we listen to next?

04/07/2026

Hiding inside choirbooks famous for Palestrina's music: a friar nobody had ever studied.

Paolo Papini (d. 1603) left behind 40+ pieces of liturgical music — and almost no one noticed, until this research pieced his life and music back together from manuscripts scattered across Regensburg, Bologna, and Münster.

He spent his career at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome's great charitable hospital, right as the Council of Trent's reforms were reshaping how church music was supposed to sound. His music isn't just a footnote to Palestrina — it's a real-time record of reform happening on the ground, shaped by the singers, resources, and even the orphans actually available at the hospital.

Swipe through for the story.

The full, open-access paper "Tridentine Reform in Action: Paulo Papini at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia" by Naomi Joy Barker is available now, published online by Cambridge University Press.

02/07/2026

"Whenever people are in trouble, the one thing they turn to is music."

Our Head of Music, Dr Naomi Barker, shares a glimpse into her research on music, medicine and religion at a 16th–18th century hospital in Rome and why it still resonates today.

From the COVID-19 pandemic to everyday stress, music has long been a way we process and cope. Naomi's work shows just how far back that story goes.

Want to hear more from Naomi? Her latest paper, Tridentine Reform in Action: Paulo Papini at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia is available now, published online by Cambridge University Press.

30/06/2026

This week's listen: Lully, Suite from Atys (1676).

This one comes with an extra opportunity to hear it performed live by our long-term partners the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment who are performing it this Saturday as part of their Secret Garden Café Concerts (relaxed, informal performances with cake and coffee included) Some of you may have already seen footage from the in-person study day they hosted with us this spring.

Atys was Louis XIV's favourite opera; so much so that the King attended rehearsals over a month before its premiere, and it became known simply as "l'opéra du roi", or the King's opera. Lully wrote it for a court that prized order, elegance, and dance above all else, and you can hear that in every bar: stately rhythms, ornamentation, and music written as much for the feet as for the ear.

This Saturday's concert places Lully alongside Lalande, Rameau, and Muffat; composers whose work shows his influence echoing across French Baroque music. It's a rare chance to hear this repertoire live, conjured from thin air by the people standing in front of you, just asit was originally imagined.

Will we see you there?

28/06/2026

What does your birth month say about the free course you should start this week?

We matched all 12 months to a free OpenLearn course from The Open University; no application, no fees, just curiosity. Swipe to find yours.

Drop your month in the comments and tag a friend who needs to see theirs.

25/06/2026

There's still time to apply for the Margaret Wooder Studentships to cover tuition fees for MA Music.

To apply, send the following to [email protected] by 30 June 2026:
• Completed application form (link in bio)
• CV of no more than two pages
• Latest degree certificate or transcript

Address

Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK76AA

Telephone

+443003035303

Website

http://fass.open.ac.uk/music

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