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Music

Master's

Application Requirements

Student Spotlight

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Application Deadlines

Fall: Rolling
Spring: n/a
Summer: n/a

School/Department

Music

Program Director

Frank Lehman

Contact

gradadmissions@tufts.edu

Location

Medford/Somerville

Format

On-campus

Commitment Options

Full-time
Part-time (Daytime)

Average Duration

1-2 years

Credits

30

Tuition per Credit

$1699

Eligible for Aid/Scholarship

Yes

Overview

Graduate students in Tufts Master of Arts in Music have the unique opportunity to study broadly across four exciting sub-disciplines—composition, ethnomusicology, musicology, and theory—while receiving a focused training in one of them.

The MA program's small size allows you to create a tailored program of study specific to your academic interests and future goals, including interdisciplinary projects that don't easily fall within traditional lines. The program encourages both immersion in a chosen field as well as creative thinking across disciplines.

Program Outcomes

As a student in the MA in Music Program, you will learn to communicate critically about music, develop knowledge of its cultural and historical contexts, and master advanced research skills. You will have the opportunity to perform original artistic work and conduct original research in a setting that emphasizes the link between academic knowledge and civic engagement.

The Tufts Music Program has a strong track record of placing students in their top-choice doctoral programs. Over the past several years, students have been accepted to Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Duke, the University of Chicago, UCLA, University of Virginia, King's College London, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Maryland, University of Toronto, University of Washington, and New England Conservatory, among others.

The Master's Program in Music also prepares students for non-academic careers. Our graduates have gone on to positions in K-12 teaching, music management, music librarianship, music performance, film, sound recording, music technology industries, and the nonprofit sector.

musical instruments

Application Requirements

Application fee
Resume/CV
Personal statement
Official TOEFL, IELTS, or Duolingo English Test, if applicable
Transcripts
Three letters of recommendation
Writing sample
Applicants intending to concentrate on composition should submit at least one score.

Tuition and Financial Aid

See Tuition and Financial Aid information for GSAS Programs. Note: This program is eligible for federal loans and Tufts tuition scholarships.

Concentrations

As a graduate student in music, you will have the opportunity to study across five exciting subdisciplines, while receiving focused training in one of them. The subdisciplines include:

Composition
Ethnomusicology
Musicology
Theory

Advanced course work and thesis research support is especially strong in Western classical music, African-American music, and World Music (Africa, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America).

Student Spotlights

Harjinder Singh

From Tufts to New Grooves

Harjinder Singh, master’s student in Ethnomusicology, explores music and dance traditions around the world

Faculty

Frank Lehman

Associate Professor

Film music, chromaticism, Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century art music, ambient music, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, transformation theory, neo-Riemannian theory, the symphony, and music aesthetics.

Kwasi Ampene

Professor and Department Chair of Music

Intersections between historical/lived experience, music, and social values; music ethnography; compositional conventions and theories in Akan music; Akan heritage of tangible and intangible stool regalia; music and social change, and Popular music.

Joseph Auner

Austin Fletcher Professor of Music

Music and technology, sound studies, Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, turn of the century Paris and Vienna, and Weimar Berlin

Alessandra Campana

Associate Professor

Opera: staging, visuality, theatricality, performance and spectatorship. Film and Media Studies: sound and music editing; aesthetics and politics of synchronization; aurality of silent film; suture; Foley; Renoir, Ophuls, Visconti and Fellini; music video and animation

Jeremy Eichler

John McCann Assistant Professor of Music

Music and memory, European cultural history, art and trauma, Holocaust, exile, modernism, criticism, public humanities, creative nonfiction, music and nature, environmental humanities.

Richard Jankowsky

Music, ritual, and trance; music and minoritized people; musics of North Africa, Sufism, and Islam; rhythmic theory; global jazz

Melinda Latour

Associate Professor

Expertise: Musicology; Research interests: 16th and 17th c. Music; the Cultural History of Philosophy; Stoicism and Neostoicism; Skepticism; Tone and Timbre; Global Music History

John McDonald

Composition and new music pedagogy; intermedia collaboration involving composing and performing; solo and chamber music composition, performance and recording; writing new music for young and non-professional performers; music applications for visual art and science; advocacy of new and overlooked composers through research and performance

Stephan Pennington

Associate Professor

Popular Music and Jazz of the United States/Europe, African American Music, Transgender Vocality, Issues of Appropriation, and the Performance of Musical Identity with special attention to race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Jeffrey Summit

Research Professor

Music and identity, music and spiritual experience, music and advocacy, and the impact of technology on the transmission of tradition.