Study Music at the Open University

Congratulations to every student collecting GCSE results today 🎉 Whatever your grades are remember to be proud of what got you here.

It's a bittersweet day for music, though since A-level music entries have hit a record low, and over a third of schools in England no longer offer GCSE music at all. For too many young people, the chance to keep studying music just isn't there by sixth form.

That's why we do things differently. The Open University is one of the few places in the UK where you can study for an undergraduate music degree without having taken A-level music. School band, church choir, home studio, years of self-taught playing — however your musicianship was built, we want to hear from you.

Because music isn't a curriculum afterthought. It's one of the most fundamental expressions of what it means to be human.

A Call to Reverse Cuts to Higher Education Funding | Music Mark A new government proposal to remove Price Group C1.2 funding for higher education music provision has prompted serious concern from across the sector. The decision risks undermining the pipeline of skilled musicians, educators, researchers and creative professionals needed for the UK’s cultural an...

This week's listen: Palestrina, Sicut cervus (published 1604).

Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus.
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God.

Just four voices, unaccompanied, and barely three minutes long. It is one of Palestrina's most loved motets, often held up as a model of Renaissance polyphony. Nothing about it is showy. Palestrina sets the text mostly one note per syllable, so the Latin stays clear and intelligible as a direct response to the church reforms of his time, which wanted sacred music to serve the words, not bury them.

But listen closely and there's real artistry in the restraint. On the word "desiderat"/ "longs", the melody quickens and rises, reaching its peak on "fontes," the streams themselves. It's word-painting at its most subtle: the music physically reaching toward the thing it describes.

The text was traditionally sung at the blessing of the water on Holy Saturday, tying the deer's thirst to the waters of baptism.

More than 400 years later in a more secular society it still captures the universal sensation of longing for something just out of reach.

What should we listen to next?

Hiding inside choirbooks famous for Palestrina's music: a friar nobody had ever studied.

Paolo Papini (d. 1603) left behind 40+ pieces of liturgical music — and almost no one noticed, until this research pieced his life and music back together from manuscripts scattered across Regensburg, Bologna, and Münster.

He spent his career at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome's great charitable hospital, right as the Council of Trent's reforms were reshaping how church music was supposed to sound. His music isn't just a footnote to Palestrina — it's a real-time record of reform happening on the ground, shaped by the singers, resources, and even the orphans actually available at the hospital.

Swipe through for the story.

The full, open-access paper "Tridentine Reform in Action: Paulo Papini at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia" by Naomi Joy Barker is available now, published online by Cambridge University Press.

This week's listen: Lully, Suite from Atys (1676).

This one comes with an extra opportunity to hear it performed live by our long-term partners the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment who are performing it this Saturday as part of their Secret Garden Café Concerts (relaxed, informal performances with cake and coffee included) Some of you may have already seen footage from the in-person study day they hosted with us this spring.

Atys was Louis XIV's favourite opera; so much so that the King attended rehearsals over a month before its premiere, and it became known simply as "l'opéra du roi", or the King's opera. Lully wrote it for a court that prized order, elegance, and dance above all else, and you can hear that in every bar: stately rhythms, ornamentation, and music written as much for the feet as for the ear.

This Saturday's concert places Lully alongside Lalande, Rameau, and Muffat; composers whose work shows his influence echoing across French Baroque music. It's a rare chance to hear this repertoire live, conjured from thin air by the people standing in front of you, just asit was originally imagined.

Will we see you there?

What does your birth month say about the free course you should start this week?

We matched all 12 months to a free OpenLearn course from The Open University; no application, no fees, just curiosity. Swipe to find yours.

Drop your month in the comments and tag a friend who needs to see theirs.

This week's listen: Lili Boulanger - Psalm 24 "La terre appartient à l'Éternel"(1916).

Boulanger was the first woman to win the Grand Prix de Rome, France's most prestigious composition prize; a remarkable achievement at any time, let alone in 1913.

She came from a musical dynasty: her older sister was the composer and renowned teacher Nadia Boulanger, and their father was also a composer.

Psalm 24 is a brief, blazing piece: brass fanfares, timpani, organ, and choir building toward a final declaration of glory. It was written in 1916, a difficult year for Europe and for Boulanger herself, who was beginning to understand that her lifelong ill health would leave her very little time. She died in 1918 at just 24, after years of chronic illness.

Despite her short life, she left behind a body of work praised for its harmonic richness, formal control, and emotional depth.