Music Theory
A high degree of interaction
By design, our Music Theory graduate program is small, matriculating two or three masters and doctoral students each year. Our small numbers make for a high degree of interaction between faculty and graduate students, who also work with us as teaching assistants in the undergraduate curriculum.
The course requirements for both the MA and Ph.D are flexible and loosely drawn, allowing graduate students to tailor the degree to their own musical and intellectual interests.
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Degrees offered
The Music Theory MA/PHD program is not currently accepting applications.
Although there is a core curriculum for both degrees—two semesters of the history of music theory, one semester of Schenker, and one semester of post-tonal music theory—students are encouraged to take seminars and classes with our ethno/musicological colleagues, and in other departments, in effect giving them leave to construct their own curricula.
Our seminars are determined by the interests of both faculty and students, and in recent years have included such topics as the role of diagrams in music theory, Debussy and Bergson, recent developments in electroacoustic and computer music, the string quartets of Bartok, and the writings of David Lewin.
We also offer instruction on a collaborative basis, allowing students to focus even more intensively on their own musical and music-theoretical interests.
Faculty
Music Theory faculty is focused on helping our graduate students develop as writers. In the masters program, the emphasis is on writing papers students will submit in support of applications to Ph.D programs, either here or elsewhere. In the Ph.D program, the emphasis is on nurturing the skills needed to research and write a dissertation. In both curricula, however, the principal question is the same: What does it mean to write creatively and engagingly about music?