Research and creation of a new musical score for opera / oratorio developed in collaboration between Royal Northern College of Music (for the composer

This studentship seeks to address one of the key challenges in text-led contemporary orchestral and operatic music: to forge and develop successful collaborative partnerships between equally accomplished composers and poets to produce new work.

Over the course of the PhD, the composer will develop methods and skills in making music with text, explore and learn from existing repertoire (particularly 20th / 21st Century opera) and build on this research to develop new music / text settings, initially on the scale of songs, in partnership with the poet-librettist (MMU). These smaller 'sketch' experiments will develop, as the PhD progresses into a focus on the major 'work' - a new opera / oratorio.

This multi-collaborative project will develop working methods to be shared with future composer / poet partnerships. This dissemination of research methods can be via MMU/RNCM/BBC websites/blogs, but also - through the BBC Philharmonic and supervisors' extensive broadcast contacts - we hope to interest BBC Radio 3 strands such as Music Matters or Free Thinking.