CIT Cork School of Music.

Cork Institute of Technology’s Cork School of Music has announced what it is calling ‘Ireland’s first degree in Popular Music’, which will run at the school from September 2012.

The Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Popular Music will host twenty musicians engaged in full time study. The announcement states that ‘singers, guitarists, bassists, keyboard players and drummers will study performance skills, ensemble, harmony and theory, song writing, music technology, music business and entrepreneurship’.

It is not clear, however, what substantially distinguishes this new course from the one currently running (since September 2011) at Dublin Institute of Technology, in partnership with the UK rock school BIMM, apart from nomenclature. The latter course is described as offering a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Commercial Modern Music, within which students performing on similar instruments to those just listed can study ‘songwriting and business’, whilst a range of music-theoretical subjects similar to those of the Cork course are on the Dublin curriculum.

Stephen Graham recently authored a recent Journal of Music article lamenting the absence of a degree in popular music at an Irish university. ‘Whilst these two programmes are obviously to be welcomed, they are not, in the first place, at an Irish university. More importantly, they are practically-focused programmes orientated towards performance and commerce,’ said Graham. ‘There is still a glaring absence of theoretically-focused programmes in popular music comparable to the type of non-commercial, non-practical Bachelors of Music available at many Irish universities. This is, of course (see comments to the above article), notwithstanding the very valuable opportunities students have to study popular music along these theoretical lines within larger degree programmes at institutions such as U.C.C. and Maynooth.’

Application to participate in the Cork course is through CIT Cork School of Music in 2012. E-mail popularmusic [at] cit [dot] ie, with closing date of 8 June. Applications in subsequent years will be through the CAO system.

Full details here.