Chamber Music Program
Heather Wittels, director
The wide-ranging and inclusive Chamber Music Program provides numerous performance opportunities for undergraduate and graduate student musicians and University of Chicago community members. Chamber music groups are organized at the beginning of the year, guided in repertoire selection, and coached regularly by the Chamber Music Program Director and the Department's artists-in-residence, with opportunities for workshops and master classes with visiting guest artists and other Chicago-area musicians.
Performance Opportunities
The Performance Program encompasses a wide range of musical opportunities for talented musicians throughout the campus and community. The program is open to undergraduate and graduate students from all majors and areas of study, as well as faculty, staff, and community members. The Performance Program involves hundreds of musicians across campus in a full schedule of concerts, master classes, and workshops each year. Performances regularly include special guest soloists, multi-arts collaborations, and world premieres, along with both masterworks and unusual treasures of the repertoire.
Music History and Theory
The Music History and Theory program emphasizes a wide range of methodologies and musical repertories, preparing students for careers as leading music scholars. Studies in music history may encompass cultural history, textual criticism, institutional history, hermeneutics, anthropology, race and gender studies, critical theory as well as film and media, and they often reflect a dynamic interplay between these disciplines.
Ethnomusicology
The Ethnomusicology program prepares students to evaluate and study the place of music in various cultural contexts. Students are trained in cultural theory, anthropology, ethnographic methods, problems in cross-cultural musical analysis, and world music and vernacular musical traditions. The University has particular strengths in Middle Eastern, Latin American and Caribbean, and South Asian studies. Chicago ethnomusicology students have undertaken fieldwork in North America, North Africa, Europe, East Asia, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.
Composition and Sound Practices
The Composition and Sound Practices program focuses on facilitating the making of creative, critical, experimental, and socially engaged music, sound, and intermedia work in the context of the humanities. In this program, students compose, design, perform, and produce based on the methodological study of music and sound through research, analysis, and reflection, and by learning a broad range of composition techniques and creative technologies.
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Undergraduate Courses
The Department of Music aims to broaden the exposure to and enrich the understanding of the various musical traditions of the world. Courses in the department address the materials of tonal music in the Western tradition, the analysis of individual works, the study of composers and genres, non-Western and vernacular repertories, musical composition, critical approaches to music, and the role of music in society.
Alumni
For nearly 90 years, the University of Chicago Department of Music has prepared graduates to be leaders in the creation and study of music, both historical and contemporary. Graduates of the Department's PhD program hold professorships and lead scholarship in many of the pre-eminent universities, research, and music institutions around the world.
We invite you to visit these pages for the latest news from Department of Music alumni, and to stay connected through in-person and virtual events.