Music

Program Offered: M.A.
http://as.tufts.edu/music/program/graduate.htm
617.627.3564

The Master of Arts (M.A.) in music is for students interested in teaching, pursuing careers in music, or continuing their education as part of a doctoral program.

The goals of the M.A. program are twofold: to deepen student knowledge and skill in musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, or composition; and to expose students to research methods and intellectual paradigms in related fields.

The program consists of eight courses, one of which typically includes a thesis or a composition. Seminars cover areas such as research methods, fieldwork, women and music, critical theory, digital culture and new media, music and trance, theory and analysis, African music systems, Arabic music systems, opera and film, gender studies, Sufism, and focused seminars on individual composers and genres. Students take classes outside of their area of focus and are encouraged to participate in the department’s many performance ensembles in Western and world music.

The department has strengths in Western classical, popular, African-American, and world music (Africa and the Middle East) and its faculty members are internationally recognized for their scholarship, artistic works, and teaching.

A valuable resource for students is the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center, a 55,000-square-foot facility, which features classrooms, practice rooms, rehearsal spaces, a 350-seat performance hall, computer lab, and world music room. Library resources include the Ruth Lilly Music Library and the Frédéric Louis Ritter Collection of rare music books and musical scores from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

The program typically takes two years to complete and includes a substantial thesis or composition. Students may take courses at other institutions through the graduate consortium.

Music: Faculty

Joseph Auner, Chair
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Musicology, music theory, twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, technology

Jane A. Bernstein
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Musicology, Renaissance, print culture, women and music

Alessandra Campana
Ph.D., Cornell University
Musicology, opera, film, performance

Richard Jankowsky
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Ethnomusicology, Middle East and North Africa, trance and healing

David Locke
Ph.D., Wesleyan University
Ethnomusicology, West African music and dance

John McDonald, Director of Graduate Studies
D.M.A., Yale University
Composition, music theory, performance

John Page
M.A. University College, Dublin
Orchestral music, conducting, contemporary music

Stephan Pennington
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
Musicology and African-American music, gender and sexuality, popular music, Weimar Republic

Janet Schmalfeldt
Ph.D., Yale University
Music theory and analysis, performance, form

Joel LaRue Smith
M.M., Manhattan School of Music
Jazz performance, composition, and theory

Rabbi Jeffrey Summit
Ph.D., Tufts University
Ethnomusicology, music and religion, Uganda

Michael Ullman
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Musicology and criticism, jazz, blues