Learning Goals in the Music Major

Music offers a comprehensive basic major, along with the opportunity to pursue advanced study leading to a concentration in one of five areas: performance, musicology, music theory, composition, and music education with certification. In completing the major curriculum all students will develop a wide set of academic and musical proficiencies.

Knowledge Base

• Comprehend the chief historical styles of Western music.
• Acquire skills in fieldwork methodologies through an exposure to the discipline of ethnomusicology.
• Develop facility with tonal and post-tonal systems, culminating in advanced training in counterpoint, analysis, and jazz harmony.

Musicianship

• Develop skills in aural reception, sight singing, and the keyboard.
• Perform in an ensemble.
• Enhance musicianship skills through the private study of an instrument or voice.

Research

• Follow a departmental information literacy sequence, leading to a knowledge of the methodologies and materials of music research.
• Develop writing and presentation abilities.

Beyond the College

• Prepare for a lifelong relationship with music.
• Discover a set of vocational possibilities in the realms of performance, composition, post-graduate education and teaching, music education, and technology.

Additional Goals of the Concentrations

• Concentration in Applied Study : Develop advanced facility with an instrument or voice, leading to numerous performances with an ensemble and in solo recital.
• Concentration in Musicology : Complete advanced work on a research project, focusing either on historical musicology or ethnomusicology. Students interested in ethnomusicology will base their research on field work, done in the US or abroad.
• Concentration in Music Theory : Carry out advanced theoretical study in current fields, including set theory, transformational theory, and Schenkerian analysis, culminating in an extended paper.
• Concentration in Composition : Compose in both acoustic and electronic media as a means to understand musical pacing, structure, and logic.
• Concentration in Music Education: Undertake advanced study in current trends in education, human development, curriculum design, classroom management, modes of assessment, and theories of music learning, culminating in a semester of student teaching in an elementary or secondary school. Develop extended musicianship skills including the performance and pedagogy of a range of woodwind, brass, string, and percussion instruments, and the voice, along with ensemble conducting.