Brown University

The Department of Music is a community of scholars, creators, and performers dedicated to exploring music’s past, present, and future. Through multiple modes of inquiry and experience, the department advances new ways of understanding music as both creative expression and cultural practice throughout the world. The department promotes musical education, research, and engagement at the highest standards of excellence on an open and inclusive basis.

The study of music – a phenomenon known to all people in all ages – lies naturally at the heart of a liberal education. The Department of Music at Brown provides an ideal environment for such an education, with its integrated faculty of scholars, performers, composers/media artists, and theorists.

Our diverse curriculum combines creative courses in composition, technology, and performance with speculative studies in history, theory, ethnomusicology, philosophy, and musical aesthetics. Application merges with analysis, creation with cultural study, and multimedia experiments with broad meditations on sound, in a unique department that welcomes all.