Best Grad Programs for Music History

mamenyu
Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:35:49 +0000

Cosmos:

Talk to your professors at Chicago. Some graduate programs don’t like to (i.e. and will not) admit their own undergraduates; also, these top schools are all really PhD programs – it would not make much sense to go to Chicago and then transfer. It makes sense only to transfer from a lesser school. You usually lose time, and the possibility of transfering is always iffy.
Mary Ann Smart at UC Berkeley specializes in Opera – Kate Van Orden does earlier opera in France – and she is a Chicago Phd; Karen Hensen at Columbia also does French opera, 19th century; you should also check out the resumes of faculty members at the other schools you are considering.

Yes, that is probably Richard Taruskin – his Oxford History of Western Music is an amazing accomplishment; he is quite brilliant, influential, and can be difficult (there is a recent exchange in the TLS letters section involving him and a review of a book about Elgar).