Oxbridge Music Interview Questions
The best way to prepare for your Oxbridge Music interview is through mock interviews. As well as giving you general interview experience, they focus your mind on the types of questions asked at an Oxford or Cambridge Music interview, teaching you to think in the manner required for the real thing.
Below, we have collected a series of questions of the type you will be asked in your Oxbridge Music interview. Use them to gain an awareness of what's expected of you, plan out answers on your own, or give them to a teacher, friend, or family member, and ask them to conduct a mock interview with you.
Note: If you are doing mock interviews with us, we recommend waiting until afterwards to look through these questions, so that you aren't asked questions you have already prepared for (as you won't have that opportunity for the real thing!). If you haven't booked any mock interviews yet, you can do so here.
Music Interview Questions
If you could invent a new musical instrument, what kind of sound would it make?
Do you feel that music is an art incomparable to history in that history cannot be performed?
How did Wagner’s operas influence the history of Western music?
Why has music developed the way it has?
Which venue do you most like to play in acoustically?
How had the piano developed by the time of Beethoven?
How is music related to free will?
How do you think the current economic climate will affect music?
What would your desert island disc be?
How are Vivaldi’s ritornellos different to Bach’s ritornellos?
Why haven't there been many French operas?
Do you think the type of bow a violinist uses can affect our understanding of a piece?
If you were sent to a desert island to study composition, which 3 composers' works would you take with you and why?
What are the different ways in which you listen to music? How does that change the way in which you think about what you are listening to?
How are Vivaldi’s ritornellos different from Bach’s ritornellos?
Is an awareness of context necessary to appreciate a composer's works?
Why do you think the jazz tradition branched off from popular music?
And that's all of them! Hopefully, you now have a sense of the types of questions you may be asked. To be even better prepared, try answering these and other questions with our tutors - you can book your mock interviews here.
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