How do I go about analysing and discussing a piece of music?

At Oxbridge interviews, it's likely you'll be presented with a piece of music (written, in this case) to discuss with your interviewers. This can be a very challenging exercise, but they will probably have chosen something that has lots of potential for interesting discussion. You'll only have about 10 minutes to discuss this, so your interviewers aren't looking for a fully-fledged analysis of every detail, but there are a few important things they'll be looking out for. First and foremost, you'll want to demonstrate that you've properly understood what's on the page - that you've read it accurately, understood the structure, made some guess as to who it's by and when it might have been written, and identified some interesting elements in it that could be talking points. It's a good idea to have a fairly solid plan about what you'll say about it, but obviously be prepared to answer questions that go a bit deeper: why might the composer have used that structure? How does the placement of that interesting moment affect the trajectory of the piece? Why is that key change important (and what is it)? This is the kind of thing that's helped by listening to a lot of pieces with the score in front of you and discussing them with a teacher.