Yale University

Yale University

While most universities are proud to boast one major music institute, Yale University is an exception. At the Connecticut Ivy Leaguer the study of music is split between several independent divisions, each with its own resources and specialties.

The School of Music and the Department of Music, which occupy the same block in the city of New Haven, are the university's main musical outlets. But while the School of Music is a performance-based professional graduate school, both undergraduates and postgraduates attend the Department of Music, which specializes in music history and theory.

'It is strange but it is actually healthy,' says professor Daniel Harrison. 'It prevents one side from overwhelming the other with its own parochial interests.' Harrison, who studied at Yale in the 1980s, is chair of the Department of Music - a 'middle manager between the faculty and students', as he puts it.

Harrison's department is small in size, with 27 faculty members, around half a dozen PhD students, and between 40 and 55 undergraduate students pursuing BA degrees in music or joint programs with Italian, computer science, or chemistry, for example. Harrison anticipates an increase in numbers in the future thanks to several new initiatives and appointments: 'We have made some terrific hires, mainly in the areas of music history and theory but also in undergraduate vocal performance. Opera is becoming one of our specialist areas - especially early music.'

'Unlike many other schools, we don't have a performance major or a composition major or anything like that'

'Unlike many other schools, we don't have a performance major or a composition major or anything like that,' says Michael Truskowski, an undergrad double-majoring in music and economics.

Undergraduate music students take five core classes in music history and theory but, subject to an audition, can also take performance lessons at the School of Music. 'Performance can still be a large part of one's undergraduate music education here,' Truskowski adds.

The department offers a wide variety of courses on subjects from the nature of musical genius and music and European thought through to music and mathematics. Twenty-year-old Truskowski, from Bridgewater, New Jersey, explains that students have a 'shopping period' at the start of each semester when they can try out any class that interests them. 'Honestly, I think this is one of the most ingenious parts of our academic program,' he says.

And Truskowski adds that, despite the department's competitive admissions process, students work together in a cooperative atmosphere once inside: 'We have an almost idiosyncratic aversion to discussing our grades, so everyone works at what is truly their own pace.'

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