Study musicology at Indiana University!

The IU Musicology Department, ranked by the National Research Council as one of the best musicology programs in the nation, is a close and friendly community of scholars. We offer a large and active faculty covering a wide range of approaches to music, strong financial aid, an outstanding music library, ample teaching opportunities, and the resources of a major research university and comprehensive school of music. Our alumni hold prominent and exciting jobs in and outside academe. See the Musicology interview requirements HERE

Browse our latest newsletter, visit our FAQ page, or reach out to musicol@iu.edu with questions or to schedule an appointment with faculty or student members of our department.

IU at AMS

The IU Departments of Musicology will host a reception at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Chicago. Join us Saturday, November 16, 9:30-11:30 p.m. CST in Clark 5 (on the 7th floor of the Palmer House Hilton Hotel). This event is open to current and prospective students, faculty, alumni, and anyone who wants to stop by and say hello!

If you have questions, please reach out to:

• Prof. Massimo Ossi, admissions committee chair
• Prof. Ayana Smith, department chair
• Sarah Slover, department administrator

Departmental academic life finds a focus in the Musicology Colloquium, a near-weekly forum for the presentation and discussion of research by graduate students and faculty members. Masters students participate in a Musicology Reading Group for discussions of recent literature. Other academic and musical resources include the Department’s digital humanities center (the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature), the William & Gayle Cook Music Library, the Department of Music Theory, the Historical Performance Institute, the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology (in the College of Arts and Sciences), the Archives of Traditional Music, the Latin American Music Center, and the Lilly Library (rare books and manuscripts). The Department has hosted conferences on Mozart, Chopin, Isaac, Handel, Penderecki, Handel, and Music & Trauma. We cultivate connections with interdisciplinary units including Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Jewish Studies, the Russian and East European Institute, and the O’Neill Arts Administration program. Extensive language programs are available through the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

There are ample opportunities for teaching. PhD students serve as Associate Instructors in the undergraduate music history course. Advanced PhD students teach sections of graduate review courses and summer courses for undergraduates and graduate students. There are also opportunities to teach in the university’s General Studies program and in residential programs.

Students have recently completed dissertations on choral singing and English politics in the 1930s, Puritan Psalm singing, women in French opera, avant-garde music in communist Cuba, music and travel narratives in the 19th century, music under Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, networks of Venetian musicians, memory in Schumann, digital approaches to Troubadour song, singing lyric poetry in Southern Italy during the 15th century, Jan Ladislav Dussek, experimentalism in the 1960s, music antiquarianism in 18th-century Britain, Kennedy’s art policy, American binders’ volumes, Peter Maxwell Davies, sampling in hip-hop, Italian madrigal prints, nostalgia in Puccini’s operas, George Chadwick’s chamber music, Messiaen, Vincenzo Galilei, radio music, Leonard Bernstein, the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the East German regime, music during the Thirty Years’ War, the avant-garde in Poland, violin virtuosity, English opera, Telemann’s printed cantatas, hybrid East-West opera, Liszt’s arrangements, musical Russia abroad, and New Hollywood cinema.

Current dissertations include topics on survivor composers’ response to the Holocaust, modernism and artist communities in early 20th-century US, listening to music across human and nonhuman species, music and identity in 19th-century Spain, folk music revival in the 1960s, heavy metal and canonization, Saxon opera during the Napoleonic period, music and identity in Mexico, performance in a more-than-human world, the performance of poetry in early 17th-century italy, organ tablature and conceptions of music in the 17th century, drum and bugle corps in the Vietnam era, and 20th-century musical mythologies of outer space.

Students are supported in their research by grants from the DAAD, Fulbright-Hayes, American Association of University Women and many other sources. Departmental research funds support research trips and the presentation of papers at conferences. In recent years, these programs have helped students to do research or present at conferences from Boston to Los Angeles and in Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, China, Cuba, and Mexico. Advanced students and graduates have had success in finding teaching positions as well as employment in music libraries, archives, editing, and in public broadcasting. Recent academic appointments include the University of South Carolina, the University of Southern California, Hillsdale College, Juilliard, the University of Redlands, the University of Washington, Butler University, Texas Tech University, and Mercer University.

Questions?

We’d be pleased to hear from you. Please contact us at musicol@iu.edu if you have any questions at all. For technical questions about applying to IU, please consult the Jacobs School of Music’s admission and financial aid office here.