The PhD program in music with a concentration in musicology focuses on the scholarly study of sound and music in historical contexts, musical traditions as sociocultural artifacts and behaviors, and performance. These areas are approached through the investigation of genres, styles, forms, performance and listening practices, instruments, spaces, philosophies, musical infrastructures and geographic locations.
Faculty members include Sabine Feisst, Dave Fossum, Kay Norton, Catherine Saucier, Peter Schmelz, Ted Solis, Christi Jay Wells, and faculty associate Bliss Little. They are leading scholars specializing in western and non-Western music, particularly traditions in the Americas and Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, USSR), and music of the Middle East, Central Asia, Latin America, and Indonesia as well as medieval music cultures, the long nineteenth century, jazz, music in popular cultures, musical modernism and experimentalism, intellectual property law, cultural policy, improvisation, sound studies, ecomusicology, dance and embodiment, and music's role in well-being.
Coursework includes historiography, applied musicology, methodologies and pedagogy. Transdisciplinary studies are encouraged with scholars and artists in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre (e.g., a studio professor, music theorist, or composer), the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (e.g., a design or dance faculty member), and faculty in schools and institutes across the university (e.g., specialists in languages, regions or cultures).
A plan of study is designed by the student with the faculty to support an individualized research trajectory. Research conducted by students in the doctoral program in musicology aims to examine and interrogate the discipline of musicology and to expand the traditional boundaries of music scholarship by challenging methodological and disciplinary boundaries. The program concludes with a dissertation.