Music Program Overview

The music program welcomes all enrolled MIT students, regardless of major, who wish to take subjects in music history/culture, composition/theory, music technology, and performance in the areas of classical, jazz, popular, and world music. At MIT it is possible to major (full, joint, or double), minor, or concentrate in Music. Our curriculum is known for its fantastic variety of quality offerings to undergraduates at all levels of preparation and talent. Our faculty and teaching staff is comprised of distinguished award-winning composers, musicologists and performers and include two Institute Professors, the highest honor awarded to only about a dozen members of the entire MIT Faculty.

All of our 12-unit classes fulfill the HASS-Arts distribution requirement. Four of our classes (Introduction to Western Music; Introduction to World Music; The Supernatural in Music, Literature, and Culture; and Folk Music of the British Isles) fulfill the Communication Intensive - Humanities requirement for freshmen and sophomores. Music is a popular Concentration for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences requirement (four courses of your eight-subject HASS requirement). A Music minor requires six courses and includes exposure to all areas of the curriculum. A full Music major is offered in several different tracks of study and can be planned individually in conversation with our faculty and the music major advisor.

Our vibrant performance offerings have options for vocalists and instrumentalists (in classical, jazz and world music) led by professional musicians. They are open by audition to all MIT students (graduate and undergraduate) regardless of major on a for-credit or non-credit basis. For students interested in private instruction, lessons with Boston-area instructors are possible through the Emerson Program, which awards full and half scholarships by audition to MIT students of outstanding achievement.

 

View Book: The Musical Institute of Technology

 

Please visit the MIT Open Courseware site to view the content and materials used in selected MIT music subjects.