Interested in doing a Minor in Amsterdam?

The minor Music, Culture, Cognition enables students to establish links between culture and cognition through the study of music across cultures (and potentially even across species). It offers a unique combination of cultural theory and methods from the cognitive sciences through a focus on music, its workings, functions and origins. You will be working with experts from the fields of both cultural musicology and music cognition. See for more information the UvA website.

Interested in BA and MA/MSc level courses on Music Cognition?

For an overview of the 2020/21 courses on computational and cognitive musicology / music cognition at University of Amsterdam, see http://www.mcg.uva.nl/courses.html

Interested in a research masters course on musicality?

How Music Works: Music Cognition (MSc course Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 6 EC) | Prof. dr H. Honing and guest lecturers | Start 2020 semester 2, block 2.

The aim of the course is to identify the cognitive, biological and mechanistic underpinnings for music cognition as key ingredients of musicality, to assess to what extent these are unique to humans, and by doing so providing insight in their potential biological origins. As such this course has the aspiration to lay a new, interdisciplinary and comparative foundation for the study of musicality (Honing, 2018).

In addition this course will discuss recent developments in the research field of music cognition. Topics include a) the origins and evolution of musicality, b) the cognition of rhythm and melody, c) musical competence, d) relation between music and nonmusical abilities, and e) the similarities and differences between music and language. The topics might change due to recent developments.

For detailed information, and how to register as a secondary subject, see UvA Studiegids 2019/20.


Honing, H. (ed.) (2018). The Origins of Musicality. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Interested in doing a Master in Amsterdam?

Application deadline for our one-year English-language MA programme in music studies is extended. You can apply until Sunday 3 March 2019 23:59 hours CET. Check it out now at www.musicstudies.nl and spread the word!

N.B. For Dutch/EU students the deadline is 15 May.

Want to know how music works?

mcg.uva.nl/howmusicworks

The University of Amsterdam offers two Master-level courses grouped under the name How Music Works. Several members of the Music Cognition Group contribute their various backgrounds to these courses, ranging from music theory and cognitive science to psychology and computer science. Next to outlining the theoretical underpinnings and presenting an up-to-date view of the field of music cognition, it provides practical hands-on classes presenting a variety of computational techniques and experimental designs.

See here for more information on all courses related to the Music Cognition Group (MCG@ILLC).

Interested in doing a Masters in Amsterdam?

For more information on how to register, see here.

N.B. The deadline for international students is 1 March 2018.

Want to know how music works?

www.mcg.uva.nl/howmusicworks

The University of Amsterdam now offers two Master-level courses grouped under the name “How Music Works”. Several members of the Music Cognition Group contribute their various backgrounds to these courses, ranging from music theory and cognitive science to psychology and computer science. Next to outlining the theoretical underpinnings and presenting an up-to-date view of the field of music cognition, it provides practical hands-on classes presenting a variety of computational techniques and experimental designs.

See for more information: www.mcg.uva.nl/howmusicworks