For More Information
Graduate Program Chair in Composition and Theory,
Eric Chasalow
Graduate Program Chair in Musicology, Allan R. Keiler
Joint MA Advisor in Music & Women's and Gender Studies, Allan R. Keiler
For more information about admissions, financial aid, and student services, please visit the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Musicology
From the Gorham Collection
The graduate programs in musicology are conceived as an integrated approach to the understanding of the nature, structural principles and historical development of music. Courses on the graduate level consist of proseminars and seminars: proseminars typically survey an array of topics illustrating the representative avenues of research and methodological approaches; seminars are typically intensive investigations devoted to a single topic and stress original research. Students may elect to concentrate in Music History or Theory and Analysis. In either case, three degree programs are available. Under normal circumstances, the M.A. is a one-year program and the M.F.A. is a two-year program. The Ph.D. typically entails one year of supervised dissertation research following the completion of M.F.A. requirements.
The Music History concentration, which embraces the entire repertory of Western music from the Middle Ages to the present, introduces students to a variety of research methods and scholarly approaches including source studies, stylistic development and historiography.
The Theory and Analysis concentration emphasizes inquiries into the history of musical theory as well as analytic work in the context of theory construction. This approach involves the evaluation of analytic models addressing pretonal, tonal, and contemporary musical repertories.