The Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Music at BU School of Music is for students who desire a broad liberal arts education while exploring music without a strict focus in performance, composition and theory, or music education. The major prepares students for graduate work and academic careers in musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and composition, and for professional careers in music criticism, music librarianship, music publishing, arts management, and other wide-ranging areas of the music and arts industry.
The BA in Music with a concentration in Musicology & Ethnomusicology provides students the opportunity to explore the large-scale relationships between culture, politics, and musical repertories of the Western and non-Western world, from the past to the present. Faculty expertise runs the gamut from the Middle Ages to popular music, from Indonesia to Japan, Africa, and the Americas, and from manuscript studies to oral traditions and technology.
The Musicology & Ethnomusicology program at BU is led by a vibrant, active, diverse, supportive, and inclusive Department, dedicated to a shared purpose and a field without walls between scholarship and performance. Faculty expertise runs the gamut from the Middle Ages to popular music, from Indonesia to Japan, Africa, and the Americas, and from manuscript studies to oral traditions. Students are encouraged to search new vistas of inquiry and stretch themselves intellectually in a supportive and cooperative environment.
Curriculum requirements for the BA in Music program can be found on the Academic Bulletin.
Opportunities
The Musicology & Ethnomusicology program at Boston University is dedicated to ongoing contribution to the academic music studies. As part of BU School of Music the program has ties to the large performance ensembles as well as to a wide range of other academic departments. In addition, BU is a member of the Boston Consortium, a group of universities where students can cross-register for courses.
Center for early music studies
The Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University (CEMS) is dedicated to the cultivation and dissemination of performance, scholarship, and new pedagogical practices involving music of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods.
The Beethoven Center for Research promotes scholarship in a wide spectrum of Beethoven studies, with a focus on analysis and criticism, sketch and autograph studies, biography, and historical and cultural contexts.
Q&A: CFA’s Victor Coelho unpacks Ryan Coogler’s hit horror film, Sinners
Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) depicts ancient African griots, Mississippi sharecroppers, and Chicago bluesmen as links in the same chain in the 2025 film Sinners, giving vent to Black joy and pain through music. But making music from deep in the soul carries risks—and, in Coogler’s vision, some of those risks have fangs.
Victor Coelho,CFA professor of music in the musicology and ethnomusicology department, says, “The film draws on a deep, deep history of Mississippi culture, and this relationship between music and the occult that’s manifested in blues songs and blues lyrics, and of course most famously represented by Robert Johnson’s apocryphal story about making a deal with the Devil. That story goes in and out of reality and myth. And myth is important in music. Myth is important in any kind of sacred music. You have to believe.”
Musicology & Ethnomusicology Faculty
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Michael Birenbaum Quintero
Associate Professor of Music, Musicology & Ethnomusicology
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Victor Coelho
Professor of Music; Director, Center for Early Music Studies; Chair, Department of Historical Performance
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Dan DiPiero
Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology & Ethnomusicology
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Brita Heimarck
Associate Professor of Music
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Gregory Melchor-Barz
Professor of Ethnomusicology; Chair, Musicology & Ethnomusicology Department
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Andrew Shenton
Professor, Musicology and Ethnomusicology; James R. Houghton Scholar of Sacred Music (School of Theology)
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Jeremy Yudkin
Professor of Music; Co-Director of the Center for Beethoven Studies
Next Steps for Applicants
The best way to determine if BU is right for you is to visit us in-person or remotely. Observe classes. Faculty members are available to meet with you and to discuss your educational interests, individual learning needs, and career goals.
Explore our admission requirements, financial tools, and resources to determine if the program is the right match. Reach out to visitSOM@bu.edu with any questions along the way.
![Georg Friedrich Haas [left] and Mollena Lee Williams-Haas [right] after a HYENA concert.](/cfa/files/2022/09/Composer-Georg-Friedrich-Haas-and-writer-and-storyteller-Mollena-Lee-Williams-636x424.jpeg)
