Academic Areas

The Department of Music at Columbia University is organized into four academic "areas," reflecting the major divisions of modern musical scholarship. These areas administer distinctive tracks within our graduate program, leading to the degrees of PhD in Musicology (with a specialization in Ethnomusicology, Historical Musicology, or Music Theory) or the DMA in Composition.While faculty members, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students are listed as affiliated with particular areas, many of us are members of two or three different areas, and all of us work across these borders to some extent. We embrace an increasingly interdisciplinary approach to music scholarship, even as we maintain longstanding commitments to our core disciplines. The areas also work together to provide a broad and comprehensive undergraduate offering for both music majors and the larger undergraduate constituency of the Department. Several distinctive scholarly and musical foci cross-cut our area divisions as well, such as our broad coverage of issues in American music, and our diverse approaches to music/language relationships.The pages linked below (and in the menu to the left) are portals to the offerings, programs, events, people, and news of each of our areas. Please examine the relevant page for further information.

Explore the Academic Areas