Combine your passion for the past with the creative opportunity to grow as a musician. This course offers a wide variety of options, allowing you to tailor your studies to your interests and strengths. Historic study could span the Neolithic period right up to the recent past, Music options cover composition, musicology and performance. You will develop both practical and transferable skills highly valued by employers, providing excellent preparation for a variety of future careers.

Why choose Bangor University for this course?

• An excellent teaching reputation: combining new technologies, innovative course design and small-group teaching.
• With historic sites on the doorstep, the local area is a fantastic teaching resource and superb location for study.
• A dynamic music-making community: choirs, orchestras, bands, student ensembles.
• Music Performance Scholarships available for the most promising instrumentalists and/or vocalists.
• Dedicated Music facilities, professional concert halls, soundproofed practice suite, four state-of-the-art electroacoustic studios.

During your degree you will learn through a variety of small-group seminar classes, fieldtrips, practical workshops, one-to-one tuition, and lectures of between 10 and 50 students. With key historic and World heritage sites on the doorstep, our location gives access to a rich resource of local heritage sites, monuments, and museums. From prehistorical burial mounds to stately homes and castles, this tremendous resource is an integral part of the course and used in our teaching through field trips, practical workshops, and excavations. Several Music modules also include field trips, for example to concerts, record companies and music publishers.

In the first year of your History degree you will choose from a selection of modules that are intended to provide a flavour of the degree as a whole. In the second and third year you will have a wide choice of more specialist and thematic modules with close consideration of original sources. This allows you to tailor your degree to your own interests. You will also research and write a dissertation on a topic of your choice in Year 3.

Alongside classroom teaching and fieldtrips, you will also benefit from a range of other academic and social activities in both Schools. This may include rehearsing and performing in ensembles, choirs and orchestras, contributing to student conferences and History journal, quizzes and social occasions, student-led trips and talks. Our students are also able to benefit from University schemes such as ‘Languages for All’ and ‘Welsh for Adults’ (free languages classes in French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Welsh) and the Study Skill Centre.

Outside this time, you will prepare for seminars, carry out research, and complete assignments. Assessment is a mixture of essays, projects, presentations, performances, and examinations. The dissertation is an important part of the final assessment. Throughout the course you will be supported by our expert and enthusiastic teaching staff.

We have a fully equipped theatre, 2 fine concert halls, and 2 building of our own – with state-of -the-art teaching rooms, rehearsal space, study areas, social learning spaces, and a number of sound-proofed individual practice rooms. There is a full complement of grand and upright pianos, harpsichords, organs, harps, percussion and world instruments. Our 5 studios are equipped to international standards for recording, research and composition. The Library contains over 3,000 CDs and over 30,000 scores.

While many graduates pursue careers in music or history and heritage, this degree will enable you to tackle a variety of career options in administration, commerce, management, and other professions. Graduates have in recent years gained careers in museum work, law, teaching and the cultural industries (e.g. as music publishers, concert managers, community arts officers, stage managers, recording and broadcasting producers, and sound engineers). Many former students have followed these degrees with either further musical training, as performers or composers, or postgraduate study in History or Music, and there are opportunities for all these at Bangor.

By studying for a degree in History and Music you will acquire a wide range of transferable skills, be they academic or personal. History and Music graduates are desirable employees due to the variety of skills they develop during the course of their degree.

Work experience opportunities at Bangor University

Year 2 and 3 students are provided with the opportunity to complete work-placement modules, which can be carried out in the university or through external organizations. These are assessed as part of the final degree. The programme enhances employability prospects and offers an insight into the type of employment opportunities a degree in history offers. Students have undertaken placements in a wide range of workplaces, including archives and heritage centres.

History, Archaeology and Heritage are complementary subjects – which together provide a richer understanding of past peoples and societies. At Bangor we offer a range of courses that allow you to study one or more of these.