The Department of Music offers training in the study, creation, and performance of a broad spectrum of music. Course offerings reflect the breadth of faculty expertise, which ranges across global and local musical practices and repertories including Western art music in all periods, African and Afro-Caribbean music, East and Southeast Asian music, jazz, pop music, improvisation, experimentalism, sound art, electronic music, and digital game music.
The major in music provides avenues for students to capitalize on the experiences and training that they bring to the program as well as opportunities to engage deeply with unfamiliar sounds, traditions, and ways of thinking and behaving musically. As a Bachelor of Arts degree, it equips students with a liberal arts education and emphasizes music as a historically situated and culturally embedded human activity entangled with personal identities, social structures, psychological states, and aesthetic ideals. Music majors gain an array of analytical, historical, argumentative, creative, and performative skills that provide a solid foundation for career paths as musicians and scholars as well as in business, law, and other professional endeavors.
The minor in music gives both formal recognition and structural coherence to the musical activities of students whose involvement with the Department of Music forms an essential aspect of their undergraduate careers. The minor requires students to engage with musical theories, materials, and techniques, the study of music in history and culture, and performance. At the same time, it provides students with the flexibility to emphasize areas that interest them most.