The magazine of the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge SCHOOLS EDITION - MICHAELMAS TERM 2015 “There’s a freedom of thought in Cambridge which makes it unlike anywhere else in the world” Robin Ticciati, Conductor Contents “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, Primed for success 4 wings to the Alumni share their stories mind, flight to The low-down 10 Applying to Cambridge the imagination , A place to call your own 14 and charm and Choosing a college gaiety to life and Tradition and innovation 16 The Cambridge Music course to everything.” Performance in the Music Faculty 20 Plato The broader context Best of both worlds 21 The CAMRAM scheme explained Calling all composers… 22 Music@Cambridge New music in Cambridge Michaelmas 2015 Composing to connect 23 Music to change the world Published by Faculty of Music 11 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DP Glittering prizes 24 Music awards at Cambridge A society for all seasons 32 www.mus.cam.ac.uk A year in the life of CUMS [email protected] Joining Forces 33 Britten’s War Requiem remembered @camunimusic Bringing the experts on-side 34 Creative collaboration with the AAM facebook.com/cambridge.universitymusic Different Strokes 35 Learning through lectures Commissioning Editors: Beyond the ivory tower 38 Martin Ennis, Sarah Williams The Cambridge outreach programme Editor: They shoot, he scores 39 E. Jane Dickson Music for film and screen Graphic design: Careers 40 Matt Bilton, Pageworks Life beyond Cambridge Meet the staff 42 Printed by The Lavenham Press Ltd Arbons House 47 Water Street Lavenham Suffolk CO10 9RN on the cover Robin Ticciati ©Marco Borggreve Welcome usty folios, fusty But what’s so special about studying Music at dons. If that’s what Cambridge? The following pages will attempt ‘Cambridge’ means to provide a comprehensive answer. to you, please read on. The University The Cambridge Music course is one that certainly has history opens doors. One of the professors at the and tradition Royal Academy of Music in London recently Din abundance, but it’s very far from a remarked that Cambridge is the place where conservative institution. The Faculty of Music the next generation of musicians is forged. now has one of the richest and most up-to- date undergraduate curricula in the world, Could you be part of this? Each university and the opportunities offered to students in applicant has five choices on his or her areas such as composition and performance UCAS form. Why not take a punt, if you’ll are second to none. This magazine is excuse the pun, at Cambridge? It could pay designed to give you a sense of these dividends for life. opportunities. You’ll find details about course options, about the sort of teaching you might expect and, crucially, information about how to apply. If you have further queries, we’re always happy to hear from you. Just call the Faculty office on 01223 761309, and they will put you in touch with the right person to deal with your enquiry. Martin Ennis Cambridge is alive with music: during Chairman, Faculty Board of Music term-time, there are more concerts than in any other educational institution in the UK. And at the heart of all this activity lies the Music Faculty, which has almost 30 lecturers and affiliated lecturers, and around 200 undergraduates and 75 postgraduates. What can Cambridge offer? The Faculty has an outstanding research record, with special areas of expertise in • an exceptionally wide range of subject areas, with much of nineteenth-century music, composition the teaching led by experts in their field and contemporary music, music and • a unique performance environment science, analysis, performance studies, • an unusually thorough training in basic musical literacy, skills ethnomusicology and popular music. that serve our graduates well in a wide range of careers The Music Faculty also has exceptional • a deep concern for the individual; this takes the form of close facilities, including a fully professional concert pastoral care – each student has both a Director of Studies hall (easily the best in Cambridge), a very well and a Tutor – as well as a high proportion of individual and stocked library, and a Centre for Music and small-group teaching Science, with a recording studio and state- • a supportive collegiate system; as well as providing a vibrant of-the-art equipment. Specialist instruments, social environment, Cambridge colleges offer unparalleled from Baroque bassoons to a Javanese practical opportunities for its students (conducting is a case in gamelan, are also available for student use. point) And there’s lots going on in the colleges: • value for money; compared to most UK universities, many have very active chapel choirs, as well as music societies that put on performances Cambridge provides a very high number of contact hours; of all types. There are also University-wide also, Cambridge spends much more on each undergraduate arrangements for choral and organ scholars than it receives in fees and a flourishing Instrumental Awards Scheme. MICHAELMAS TERM 2015 3 Primed for success The Music Tripos paves the way for a wide range of musical careers. Here, five distinguished alumni share their views on the value of Cambridge. © Marco Borggreve © Marco Robin Ticciati (Clare, 2001) is Principal Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Recent freelance projects include Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House, Hänsel und Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and Peter Grimes at La Scala, Milan. “I knew I wanted to be a conductor at the age of 13. I was playing violin with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Colin Davis was conducting, and I remember sitting there right at the back of the seconds, and thinking ‘I’m desperate to be up there, telling those stories!’” Of course, I had no idea what that really meant, but by the time I left school I knew that conducting was going to be about more than spending nine hours a day in a room, studying scores – it was going to be about drinking up life! I was lucky enough to be offered a place at Cambridge and it seemed to me then – and still seems to me now – that there was a magic about what was possible there. If you want to do something special in music – or in any field – there’s a freedom of thought in Cambridge which makes it unlike anywhere else in the world. As a conductor, you must learn to think. You must learn what the score is, who these composers were, how they wrote, why they wrote, and everything that goes with that. My music degree didn’t teach me to be a musicologist, but it made a little space in my analytical brain which is still developing now, over time, and there were certain things about the course that really, really chimed with me; hearing Martin Ennis talk academically, and emotionally, about Sibelius and Schoenberg and the Expressionist movement in the wonderful nineteenth-century course was a fundamental moment. As I carry on, all the seeds sown in Cambridge, musicologically speaking, are the things that fire my work now. You can live in your dream world at Cambridge or you can make music and make people stand up and listen. “The seeds sown in Cambridge, In my first year, someone approached me to conduct Così fan tutte; I just about knew it was an opera, musicologically speaking, are the but there was the opportunity to gather together things that fire my work now.” like-minded, or not at all like-minded musicians and basically throw the paint at the wall. There’s just something about Cambridge that allows one to be musically free to the point where it’s not about image, it’s not about status, or about industry, it’s about giving rein to your intuitive, often unformed, impulse. I think I understand the value of that more now, in retrospect, and in relation to what I do as a conductor. I see the Music Tripos as a wonderful meal; perhaps I didn’t always know what I was eating back then, but the flavours have stayed with me and I want, so often, to return to that food source.” 4 Sara Mohr-Pietsch feel tremendously grateful to have had that kind of practical training alongside the academic, and I still (Newnham 2001) is a Radio 3 broadcaster. She hosts sing on Sundays in a London church. The Choir, Hear and Now and Composers’ Rooms, as well as presenting live events from Wigmore Hall, A lot of the friends I made at Cambridge are now the Southbank Centre and the Royal Opera House. colleagues or they’re singers, conductors, répétiteurs etc, who I see around in my work. I worry slightly “I always knew I wanted to study Music about the whole Oxbridge privilege thing, it concerns academically, rather than as a performer. At school, me when I see too many of my contemporaries in I sang and played piano and I liked performing – but my world. On the other hand, I look back and there only up to a point; I’m not a practiser, and I lack were just so many incredibly talented musicians there a great deal of discipline. Yet I always felt like a at the same time, so it’s great to see those talents musician. I remember thinking very clearly, aged flourishing. 18, ‘Music touches me, and moves me, and changes who I am, and I want the science behind it, I want to Although I grew up listening to Radio 3, it never really understand how it works’.