For Prospective Music Majors

So You Want to Be a Music Major?

Robert Fallon

Parents at their side, high school students sometimes ask me where to apply if they want to study music in college. The answer is more complex for music than for most college majors. This primer on studying music in higher education is intended to orient prospective students to the three basic types of collegiate music programs and to help them find the one that suits them best.

It should be understood from the start that most music programs at the college level concentrate heavily on classical music. One may find majors in jazz here and there, and courses on the Beatles or the history of rock are ubiquitous. But one does not major in rock drumming or pop diva-dom—with the notable exception of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, which is the lonely only best of its kind. Even majors in Broadway-style musical theater are uncommon and are usually offered through drama departments rather than through music departments. Such shows are mounted on every college campus, of course, but are often produced by students and are not necessarily part of the degree requirements in the curriculum of a music major.

Though most programs focus on classical music, they vary greatly in their curricula and degree programs. Most college majors offer essentially the same degrees and curricula from school to school—if you major in history at Dartmouth, you will have essentially the same educational experience as a history major at Arizona State: reading, writing, reflecting on historiographical practice. In the sciences there may be some differences between studying engineering at a research university that has an entire college of engineering and a liberal arts college where the facilities and culture may emphasize different aspects of engineering. The focus on practice will likely be stronger in the college of engineering; the focus on theory stronger at the liberal arts college.

In music, however, it gets even more complex. Higher education music majors in the United States are offered in one of three basic environments: 1) music conservatories, 2) music departments, and 3) music schools. Here’s what you can expect from each one, though keep in mind that my descriptions are a bit schematic. After characterizing each of them, I will show how it gets even more complex when these basic environments blur their boundaries.

1. Music Conservatories

(Examples: Juilliard, New England Conservatory, Peabody Institute, Curtis Institute, San Francisco Conservatory)

Conservatories are based on European models of music education, where the student’s curriculum is highly pre-professional and almost exclusively devoted to the study of music, with a clear institutional focus on fostering high profieciency in performance. Such schools are self-standing (i.e. not part of a larger institution) and do not offer the broad-based academic requirements associated with the American college experience, though they may offer curricula in dance, drama, or another artistic fields. Instead, students live, eat, and breathe music for all four years. Almost all of the students are performers, with the others being composers or, perhaps, budding scholars of an academic branch of music (music theory, musicology, or ethnomusicology, which are normally available only as concentrations in graduate school). Graduation requirements are likely to include foreign language study or other coursework associated with liberal arts education, but this is neither a focus nor a strength of a conservatory’s faculty or students. In fact, professors of these courses are commonly “borrowed” from the faculties of neighboring colleges.

The reason to attend a conservatory is to study with top-notch, often internationally known performers and to embed yourself in the long, rich, demanding, competitive, and complex culture of classical music.

In a conservatory, you will likely earn a bachelor of music (BM) and major in your instrument (voice, cello, percussion, etc.). You will hone musicianship skills and learn to be a knowledgeable and proficient artist. The artistic demands on your time and expertise will be very high and the academic rigor beyond the study of music (and sometimes even beyond the demands of performance) will be comparatively less intense. As with any discipline, the benefit of participating in a culture with a track record of success and a focus on excellence can be very rewarding for personal and professional growth.

What conservatories are best? The answer depends, of course, on what you’re looking for. Many students want to attend a particular school because they wish to study with a particular professor they have chanced to meet at a master class. Perhaps the student wants to pursue a career in a symphony orchestra and so seeks a professor who is or was a member of a prestigious symphony. Some conservatory faculties are drawn largely from the talent in local orchestras, as is true for New England Conservatory and the Boston Symphony, Carnegie Mellon and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Northwestern and the Chicago Symphony, and many others. Or perhaps the student’s talent is so brilliant that studying with a famous soloist is best.

Despite the privilege and obvious benefits of taking weekly private lessons with highly accomplished musicians, students may on occasion find that their teacher is on tour and may need to reschedule lessons. Some schools have reputations for being strong in one orchestral family, such as brass, but weaker in others, such as voice. Some voice programs may be strong in opera, but weak in early music performance or in musical theater. The details may matter and are best learned by scouring websites and talking with people familiar with the individual school.

Other factors to consider include, of course, cost, reputation, and location. As there are typically more performance and job opportunities for classical musicians in larger cities, it may be advantageous to attend a conservatory located in a city rather than in a rural area.

2. Music Departments

(Examples: University of Pittsburgh, University of California-Berkeley, Princeton University)

Belonging to a larger college (such as a College of Arts and Sciences), which in turn is one college of several at a university, music departments follow the typical American model of a broad-based, liberal arts education. (Music was, in fact, one of the seven original liberal arts of medieval collegiate study, along with math, geometry, astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, and logic.) Like their peers in conservatories and schools of music, music majors in music departments become proficient in a variety of musical skills, such as playing the piano, sight-reading using solfège syllables, and analysis of tonal and atonal harmonies. Like their peers, they will perform in large and small ensembles and learn about the history and repertory of classical music.

At music departments, however, students typically earn a BA, not a BM. One doesn’t necessarily need to demonstrate high artistic proficiency on an instrument (or voice or composition) in order to major in music at these institutions. Instead, the focus is less on performance and more on academics, such as writing and research skills, and on the social function of music, much the way that an English major doesn’t necessarily learn to become a good poet, but rather learns to read and write about literature thoughtfully and to connect the art to its cultural environment in useful ways, such as unveiling the influence of artistic patronage or the ways that novelists respond to one another in their works. Such knowledge and skills not only expand the realm of the meaning of art and all cultural production, but also build the ability to think deeply and express oneself convincingly.

Music departments typically embrace the study of non-classical musical traditions more strongly than do either conservatories or schools of music. Non-western musics are often represented through courses on Indonesian gamelan or African drumming. Popular musical styles, too, may be studied more rigorously here than in schools whose main purpose is to train classical performers.

Some departments of music offer different “tracks,” whereby a student chooses to concentrate on performance, music academics, or perhaps other areas such as music technology. Despite the lack of focus on skilled performance, the level of performance in music departments may be exceptionally strong, with many individuals playing at levels even higher than individuals at conservatories or schools of music. Some departments may also require an audition to become a music major, as do both conservatories and schools of music, though this is certainly not always the case and standards for admission may vary greatly from department to department.

What music departments are best? The best music departments generally correlate with the academic reputation of the college or university at large; the significance of the degree may lie more with the distinction of the overall institution (e.g. Yale University) than with the department or an indiividual professor.

What can you do with a BA in music? If you’re an excellent performer or composer, you may continue your musical studies in graduate school and enter the world of being a professional musician. You may continue the academic focus and become a scholar of music theory, music history, or ethnomusicology. You may pursue a career in arts administration, or in music or arts journalism, or become involved with a production studio. You could become a church musician, a program coordinator, an arts industry executive—almost anything will draw from the skills and knowledge of a music-based liberal arts degree.

3. Schools of Music

(Examples: Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Boston University’s School of Music)

It’s useful to think about schools of music as combining the best of the music conservatory education with the best of the music department education. Schools of music are part of larger universities (or sometimes colleges, such as Oberlin or Bard), where both a dedicated school of music (where one majors in an instrument, not in music generally) and a liberal arts education are made available.

Matriculating in a school of music can lead in many directions. A voice major may graduate with a BM and with much the same experience as a student at a conservatory, while also enjoying the larger campus, expanded opportunities, and diverse activities and student body that a university offers. Or in some schools she may be able to pursue a BA in music without strong expectations that she sing at a high level, and thus enjoy an experience similar to a music major at a department of music. But she may also, perhaps, have the opportunity to pursue a degree in music education (BME), or a BA with a concentration (but not major) in vocal performance, or some other curriculum that implies different types of engagement with music. She may major in vocal performance and also communication, chemistry, or computer science. Such opportunities may also be available at music conservatories and music departments, but multiple curricula and multiple degree programs sit most comfortably in schools of music, which typically pivot on the one hand toward music performance and on the other toward participation in the university at large.

If you’re talented in more than one area and aren’t ready to commit to any one course of study, a school of music may be the best choice for you, since it will likely offer you the greatest number of options to explore before you must select a major. On the other hand, different universities offer different degrees of flexibility. If you enter a university's college of arts and sciences, you may need to audition to add a music major--and you therefore stand a chance of not being admitted. Also, some schools of music operate with a great deal of independence from the university at large while others promote inter- or multi-disciplinary courses of study. You need to read the fine print here and consult with the right faculty and staff in advance.

In today's culture of job insecurity and precarious funding for the arts, and in a climate where college is often seen less as a means for personal and intellectual growth than as a means toward a credential and a pre-professional program to acquire job skills, perhaps the best advice to prospective music majors is to study music and something else. Such a course of study keeps options open, whether they lead to a career in music or another field--or to a career that combines two or more fields. For students who are proficient in both performance and in academics, enrolling at a school of music may offer a good balance of pursuing a career in music while developing other interests.

Some schools of music have created programs where students can pursue a double major or even a second degree in addition to a BM. It's fair to say, however, that such programs are easier to pursue at some schools than at others, even if simply for geographical reasons. The School of Music at Carnegie Mellon, for instance, sits on the main campus, whereas Eastman, Shepherd, and Peabody are located at some distance from, respectively, the University of Rochester, Rice, and Johns Hopkins Universities.

Having surveyed the three basic types of music programs, it’s important to recognize that a myriad of variations on these types exist throughout the country. For example, the Manhattan School of Music is essentially a conservatory because it does not offer any curriculum except in music. Don't be fooled by the name (though it offers cross-registration at Barnard College). Also, a number of conservatories have established partnerships with local universities. Students at NEC (New England Conservatory), for example, may take coursework at Tufts University or Harvard (though these schools are hardly in the same neighborhood, making it potentially difficult to get to classes on time). They may even offer five-year programs where you earn two bachelor's degrees, one in music and one in a field offered by the other institution. Another school like this is Juilliard, which partners with Barnard and Columbia. Curtis’s partnership with the University of Pennsylvania is currently more limited. Similarly, some schools of music offer four- or five-year double degree programs or double majors with other schools in the same university, for example a BA from the college of arts and science and a BM from the school of music.

Some schools of music are nominally under the bureaucratic purview of a university, even though the partnership, often resulting from a merger of instistutions, may or may not run smoothly for students who wish to feel equally a student of music and a student in the university at large. One example is the Eastman School of Music, which is part of the University of Rochester. The campuses of these schools are not especially close to one another, making it somewhat challenging to study at both institutions. The same geographical challenge applies at the Peabody Institute and main campus of Johns Hopkins University as well as at the Shepherd School of Music and the main campus of Rice University.

As a final caution, today’s worlds of classical music and higher education are in the midst of near-existential self-evaluation and re-invention. Many new ideas, programs, and curricula come and go, usually with the aim of making classical music study more relevant to today’s culture and job market. New majors in music technology and arts administration, as well as coursework in music entrepreneurship, have been created largely in response to the perception that jobs in music performance are more difficult to find and are less secure today than they were in earlier decades. Nonetheless, change in academia comes slowly and the three principal types of higher education music study remain a good first level of understanding for where to major in music in college, a major that, if approached wisely, can sustain the soul and even be materially rewarding like no other major can, regardless whether studied at a conservatory, department, or school.

Robert Fallon has benefitted from all three types of musical institutions, first studying at and later working for New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Division, then earning two bachelor's degrees from Northwestern University’s College of Arts and Sciences and School of Music, and finally receiving his MA and PhD from the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. He has previously taught at Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts and Carnegie Mellon University's School of Music.