Introduction

We achieved the highest rating of any UK music department in the 2008 RAE and were one of the top ten departments in all subjects. Our work covers almost all the main areas of the discipline as measured by chronology (from early medieval to contemporary), geography (music of Europe, Asia and the Americas), and the standard subdisciplines (musicology, ethnomusicology, theory and composition, all understood in the broadest terms).

A particular focus is performance studies, ranging from ethnographic to computational approaches, with the Department hosting CHARM (the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Record Music) and playing a significant role in its successor centre, CMPCP (the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice).

Our long-term success in attracting external research funding has enabled us to deliver a large number of major infrastructural projects, ranging from bibliographical tools such as UK RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) and Hofmeister XIX to innovative musicological applications of new technology such as OCVE (the Online Chopin Variorum Edition) and CFEO (Chopin's First Editions Online).

Our research community also includes postdoctoral research fellows and honorary research staff whose work complements that of our permanent staff. We are involved in the support of research activity at all levels, regularly hosting international conferences, workshops and study days on the main campus and in central London.