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.
Department of Music
Department of Music
The Department of Music is a community of scholars, creators, and performers dedicated to exploring music’s past, present, and future.
Department of Music
The Department of Music is a community of scholars, creators, and performers dedicated to exploring music’s past, present, and future.
Academics
Undergraduate
Our diverse curriculum combines creative courses in composition, technology, and performance with speculative studies in history, theory, ethnomusicology, philosophy, and musical aesthetics.
Graduate
At Brown, your degree is what you make it: the more adventurous you are, the more exciting your program is likely to be.
Music Making
The Department of Music at Brown offers a huge array of performing opportunities, all available for academic credit.
Students seeking to improve their playing or singing ability have the option of taking individual private lessons with about thirty professional musicians from the greater Boston-Providence area.
Recent News
News from the Department of Music
The 2026 Music Awards for Outstanding Undergraduates
Each spring, the Department of Music faculty vote on and bestow academic and performance awards to outstanding undergraduate students at Brown University. The awards are presented in person at the Honors & Awards Ceremony. This year's ceremony was presided by Professor Eric Nathan, Director of Undergraduate Studies. The 2026 awardees are listed below. Congratulations to all recipients of awards this year!
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Brown Graduate School
Alexander Hardan (PhD '26) Earns Presidential Teaching Award
For Alexaner Hardan, a doctoral candidate in Musicology and Ethnomusicology, the true heart of education isn't found in a cinematic lecture hall, but in the quiet, "invisible" hours of preparation: the meticulous selection of a reading, the shaping of a question, or a transformative comment left in the margins of a student’s draft.
It is this dedication to the hidden architecture of learning that has earned Hardan the 2026 Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching.
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It is this dedication to the hidden architecture of learning that has earned Hardan the 2026 Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Yale School of Music
Erica Haskell (PhD '11) Announced as Managing Director of the Yale School of Music
After a rigorous nationwide search, the Yale School of Music announced that Erica Haskell, Ph.D., has been appointed Managing Director, effective early summer 2026. Congratulations, Dr. Haskell!
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