48 Music Course Programs

As an integral academic component of the Visual and Performing Arts Department, the Music Department strives to provide an excellent academic foundation for students interested in a music career, transfer to a four-year institution, and/or desires to benefit as life-long learners.

The Florida Southern Music program emphasizes applied music while providing a solid foundation in theory, music history, and piano proficiency. Like your performance-focused counterparts, your Bachelor of Arts in Music will be rigorous, comprehensive, and performance-based. You'll take a core set of courses in music theory and history, private instrumental or voice lessons, and perform with our ensembles. Adhering to the liberal arts model, you'll gain proficiency in a foreign language while exploring other humanities like art and philosophy.

Smith’s Music Department is a lively center of musical activity with classroom courses that integrate the study of global musical genres and performance practices with critical questioning of music's complex role in society. Across offerings in composition, classical music, world music, music theory and popular music, courses emphasize interdisciplinary approaches to musical knowledge, with faculty working at the intersections of American studies, anthropology, dance studies, gender studies, and political theory.

Students work closely with professors—internationally recognized theorists, composers, performers, and musicologists—to investigate music in global, historical, and theoretical contexts. Courses encourage creative and critical thinking and emphasize music as an art form as well as a rigorous discipline. Students are exposed to music from a wide variety of past and present world cultures and can select courses in music history and theory, musicianship, performance, conducting, composition, world music, jazz history, American popular music, and African drumming.

At Franklin College, music is an invaluable dimension of a student’s educational experience. A quality music education integrates the processes of performing, interpreting, critiquing and making music in a way that is developmentally appropriate and personally relevant to students’ lives. Music gives students the means to reflect on, organize and express experiences of one’s self and world. Our music program allows for all students to make meaning out of and give an authentic voice to their inner being and outer experiences.

Students majoring in Music must choose one of the following concentrations to pursue: music production; composition; instrumental performance; vocal performance; ethnomusicology or popular music; musicology; or music theory and analysis. Students considering any of these tracks should begin by taking the appropriate entry-level music theory course in their first year. All concentrations require music theory, and many Music courses (including all the production courses) have a music theory prerequisite. Students with no prior music theory experience must take MUSC 101, offered in the fall semester. Students with some experience in music theory should take the Music Theory Placement Exam to see if they can pass into MUSC 151, offered in the spring semester.

Study acting for stage or screen, dance, music production, song writing, or learn to play an instrument. Learn to express yourself and perform your craft in dynamic classroom settings, stage plays, and take part in musical events. Our highly experienced faculty, each with professional experience, will guide you on your journey to a life of creativity.

This one-year curriculum will cover three broad areas: historical, theoretical, and skill-based music courses (musicianship, technique classes, and performance ensembles). These courses are intended to give the student a complete introduction to a course of study in music, culminating in a department award in Music.

At Wabash College, the study of music engages students through the theory of music on its own terms, the history of music as written documents, the practice and performance of music, the anthropology of music around the world, and the technology of music analog and digital. Music majors choose music classes that enrich their ensemble experience, satisfy distribution requirements, and in pursuit of a music major or minor in the context of a liberal arts education.

Learning how to listen to and study music can expand and enrich students’ interior lives, making music individually enhances creativity, and making music together touches the communal aspects of life. Music classes, including ethnomusicology, musicology, music theory and applied study, emphasize the interconnectedness of listening, creativity and critical thinking by which students become articulate practitioners of the musical arts.

The music curriculum is designed to deepen students’ understanding of musical form and expression through the development of skill in composition and performance joined with analysis of musical works and their place in various cultures. Bryn Mawr College's partnership with Haverford College allows students to major or minor in Music and take Music courses at Haverford.

At Whitman College, the Music major can help you unlock your full potential and connect your passion for music through courses in composition, history, theory, performance and production. Our supportive environment meets students-music majors and all our music students-where they are but also challenges them to surpass their own expectations as they perform, create, critically examine and advocate for the music that matters to them. With performance halls, rehearsal spaces, a listening center, a music technology studio, 14 teaching studios, 25 practice rooms-and the guidance of talented and specialized music faculty-the Whitman Music program has the resources to help students fulfill their musical aspirations.

The St. Olaf Music Department creates inspiring musical experiences grounded in an inclusive liberal arts environment, challenging students to excel artistically and engage globally for lives within and beyond the professional music world.

Courses in Music at Sewanee, your talent will be cultivated in a variety of settings, increasing your professionalism, talent, and likelihood of success in postgraduate pursuits. A wide variety of music styles are represented here on the Mountain. Through composition, performance, theory, and music culture, you'll be exposed to a wide range of tracks and be able to choose the paths that best suit your talents. We offer composition and theory, music history, and performance.

The Department of Music offers courses in the following three areas: music in social and historical context (x1xx-x3xx); music theory and composition (x4xx-x5xx); and music performance (x6xx-x8xx). Majors can choose either to pursue a broader curriculum with some balance among these areas, or to concentrate in one of them as indicated in the concentrations listed below.