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The Department of Music currently offers the Ph.D. in Music in two areas of study: Musicology & Ethnomusicology and Music & Multimedia Composition.
The long-standing doctoral program in Ethnomusicology, established in 1968, is one of the first in the country. It was combined with the study of Musicology in 2018. The Composition doctoral program had previously been known as Computer Music & Multimedia (or MEME) since it became a fully-fledged Ph.D. in 2004. Usually each program admits two or three students per year. The small size of both programs allows for significant cross-talk between the students.
Such dialogues tend to reach beyond the department as well. Brown graduate students regularly explore offerings in many other disciplines as part of their courses of study. Students in Musicology & Ethnomusicology are to be found just as often in the music building as they are in anthropology, psychology, American Studies, Africana studies and Portuguese and Brazilian studies, among others. In the same way, students in Music & Multimedia Composition make connections with faculty in Modern Culture and Media, Visual Art, Literary Arts and Engineering. At Brown, your degree is what you make it: the more adventurous you are, the more exciting your program is likely to be.
Students are encouraged to take courses throughout the University and many take advantage of courses in other departments. Students occasionally take courses at other institutions such as RISD and Harvard for credit and at no additional charge.
