The NYU Graduate Program in Music is designed for the professionally minded student who plans a career combining college-level teaching with continuing research and/or composition. We feature three degree tracks: Ethnomusicology, Historical Musicology, and Composition and Theory, but student research and interests are not expected to conform to narrow interpretations of these tracks. Indeed, our students work on a wide variety of topics including jazz, popular music, film music, world musical traditions, western art music, and musical theater. Recent graduates hold academic appointments in some of the most prestigious universities in the United States and Canada, and are making distinguished contributions to scholarship and musical composition on both the national and international levels.
The Graduate Program in Music is deliberately small, admitting six to eight students each year. The curriculum is research oriented, most courses are concerned with extending the boundaries of current knowledge.
Students in the NYU Music GSAS Composition/Theory specialization explore and refine a variety of compositional and sonic art approaches, largely through one-on-one work with faculty. We embrace creative activity across a wide spectrum of media ranging from works for acoustic instruments with and without electronics, to multi-media compositions, instrument design, and other practices that push and blur the limits of music and sonic arts.
Composition students contribute in a fundamental way to the critical debate, analysis, and presentation of music in the Department and in new music and sound art communities at large, not only through the creation of artworks, but through other avenues of academic scholarship. Ph.D. candidates in composition present a portfolio of compositions developed over their time at NYU, as well as a written dissertation. During their first three years, composers typically take the Composition Seminar every semester. They also typically enroll in the musicology and ethnomusicology proseminars in their first semester, for many, this experience is a rich source of new orientations and ideas.
The Composition Seminar is a course dedicated to the discussion of issues in contemporary composition, and features presentations by faculty, students, and invited composers, performers, sound artists, and theorists. The weekly seminar group meetings are complemented with private composition lessons, and an annual concert sponsored by the Music Department. Periodic residencies bring composers of international stature to participate in department activities under the aegis of the Samuel and Beverly Sirota Endowment for Music. Areas supported by faculty expertise are the focus of dedicated seminars and are also rotating emphases in the context of the Composition Seminar. Fields of specialization in computer music include computer-aided composition, instrument and software design, intermedia collaborations, and sound arts.
