Continuing on from last week’s post ‘PhD in music’, which explored a brief history of the degree and how it came about, this week we will solely concentrate on how one can become a ‘music doctor’ today.

Note: one can do a PhD in subjects other than music, and still have research enquiries in the field of music. For example, an art historian could be investigating musicians and music in paintings; a neurologist could be using music as a tool to investigate brain activities. There are also joint interdisciplinary subjects in the award title itself, such as PhD computer music, PhD music psychology, and PhD music therapy. Likewise, a PhD in music would often incorporate researching methods from other disciplines, as interdisciplinary studies are almost inevitable in current times. In my personal opinion, it is a matter of which field you want to situate yourself in by the completion of your PhD, and the criterion on which your (and your thesis) will be assessed by specialists of the chosen field.  

Two kinds of music doctors: PhD & DMus

There are two predominate types of music doctorate degrees:

1. Written-based, aka, a ‘PhD’ or ‘DPhil’ (Doctor of Philosophy)
2. Practice-based, aka, ‘DMus’ (Doctor of Music) in the UK, or ‘DMA’ (Doctor of Musical Art) in the US

From the abbreviation of the Latin phrase ‘philosophiae doctor’, PhD / DPhil is the traditional, research-based kind where one is required to produce (and only to produce) a written thesis. The word length varies from universities to universities, but generally in the UK it is around 70,000 to 100,000 words (excluding those in footnotes, tables, bibliography, and appendix).

DMus or DMA, as sub-branched of ‘Doctor of Arts’, from the Latin phrase ‘artium doctor’, is a practice-based doctoral degree. As the candidates are required to produce a ‘portfolio’ of practice, there is therefore a subsidy on the written component: 30,000 to 60,000 words depending on the institution. Portfolios vary depending on one’s expertise; for example, composers might include their scores or recordings of compositions, performers might include compilation of their performances.

Whichever pathway one embarks on, the emphasis is on the contribution of ORIGINAL and SIGNIFICANT research. Whilst the word ‘original’ can easily be read as ‘don’t plagiarise, this work must be your own’, the word ‘significant’ on the other hand is more difficult to pin down. What is considered significant? How do you judge whether something is significant or not?

Research ‘significance’

There was a long period of time when the word ‘significance’ or ‘impact’ brought chills down my spine. Academia is not very kind in that these words keep haunting you everywhere you go: at supervisions, in writing your thesis, at conferences, in funding applications. My research is on late 19^th-century pianos, and to be frank, it doesn’t have much of an impact in the world’s bigger picture. I often have to think long hours when writing grant proposals: how do I communicate that I must travel to France to play on that Pleyel or else I cannot change the world with my project! My mother had a very wise reply to this: ‘You don’t have to win a Nobel prize, you just have to pass your PhD’.

She’s right. I don’t have to change the world.

For those whose focus is history/cultural -related inquiry or theory analysis, significance begins with the slightest contribution of knowledge, an adding to existing scholarships by unfolding escaped and unknown narratives. For those in practice-based, ‘significance’ is much harder to define because of the subjective bias in critiquing art. In conversation with the director of research programmes at a music conservatoire, he addresses the issue at its core with a question:

Our undergraduates are performing at the Royal Albert and Carnegie Hall, and being signed with Naxos Record. How then do we justify what is a ‘phd-level’ performance?

Answering this question can be tricky. As outlined in their 2021-22 Doctoral Programme Handbook, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama reminds their doctorates to find the right balance between practice and academic rigour. [Words in quotation marks in this paragraph are directly taken from the handbook]. It is expected that students bring in to their research project their own perspective and experience as a practitioner, so that it ‘allows for research not only into ‘the object’, but also the process by which it came about’. In this respect, it is through documenting this process of ‘reflexive and reflective enquiry’, together with exploring and explaining the process with ‘complex theoretical issues’ that new ideas and knowledge is formed, so that the culminate product can have ‘broad significance and implications’.

Placing the researcher at the heart of the research remains a great challenge- I have experienced this myself, and students I coach / mentor share similar struggles, whether they are at the near-end stage of their PhD, or before-the-start stage. This is another blog for another day. One just have to keep trying and find what works best for them; it is part of the journey of becoming a ‘music doctor’.