Design your own music major in grad school

Hello, I am a recent undergrad graduate and have three degrees in math, history and piano performance. I would like to go to a grad school with the freedom of letting me design my own major since I am both interested in piano performance and music history (musicology). More specifically, I am interested in researching and performing 19th century piano duet arrangements of symphonies and chamber music, and explore how did the arrangers keep the originality as best as they can and how did these arrangements functions as a tool for the general public to know these complex non-pianistic music, and finally, try to bring this “tradition” back into the modern world. Please let me know if you have any suggustions. Thank you.
Tony

Have you looked into DMA programs. This seems like it might be a project that would be appropriate for a DMA. I also would look at a conservatory like NEC where there is a lot of freedom and an interest in exploring the intellectual side of music as compared to a program that is purely focused on performance.

PhD programs are more academic but Stac Jip is right too… Honestly, I think you could do this project at any school, for a master’s (MA or MM) or doctorate (DMA or PHD) as long as there are papers to write, thesis, dissertation.

Do you want to focus mainly on piano performance with the more academic project as part of that course of study? Or are you interested in a degree in musicology or music history with continue piano study on the side?

Honestly, you would be able to do it in many programs. I PM’ed you.

Thanks for your reply. I am more interested in focusing on piano performance with a more music history based project, but also would like to explore the possibility to do a combined degree (if possible, or at least some kind of “design your own degree” program, eg. master of liberal arts but focus on music). So far, no schools seem to be interested in about my approach, but I researched mostly about big universities, I haven’t found any small schools yet.

How are you researching this? Most programs for grad school involve some academic work related to music, along with performance, and once you finish course requirements for a doctorate, there is some freedom on what you spend time on. Are you looking at schools of music within universities and conservatories?

So far, I am researching all the schools. I would like to explore the possibility to do both degrees at the same time, as I think writing one or two long papers about the pieces I am playing isn’t enough to consider as a musicology research study (which is what most of the MM in piano performance ask for, at least from my understanding) That’s why I was talking about smaller schools, as they may have more freedom to let students study both areas at the same time

Doctorates involve very lengthy research projects as well as dissertation. I am not sureyou you will find any school that has two master’s in one, so to speak, because at the master’s level you do specialize for the formal degree. If you did find a school that was sufficiently interdisciplinary and allowed for independent, self-designed programs, you probably would not be happy with the performance part of the program.

One option is to study musicology formally and continue piano with lessons and performance outside of the degree program itself.

I do think you will be able to do substantial academic work in a doctoral program. Not sure if finances are an issue. Have you looked at curricula and course requirements for doctoral degrees in various schools to check this out? Or are you mainly looking at masters?

Have you checked out the UK where the masters is one year?

I haven’t looked at schools outside of the U.S. yet and finance is part of my consideration. I am mainly looking at masters programs right now, and within the DMAs I have looked at, all of them require masters. What do you mean by I won’t be happy with the performance degree from a school which allow me to do both degrees at the same time?