<p>I'm curious as to what the music department is like for a serious musician (eg conservatory trained). I'm looking to study composition. The UVa brochure says that it's music dept. is "expanding". I'm a Jefferson finalist, and I absolutely love the school as a whole. Can someone paint a more accurate picture of life as a UVa music major? It's hard to get a feel for it, and I won't be visiting until the Selection Weekend.</p>
<p>Also, does anyone know the status of the new music building? Is it part of the new “Arts Grounds” project?</p>
<p>The composition faculty is especially, but not exclusively, involved in electronic composition and the department houses the Virginia Center for Computer Music. The most senior composer is Judith’s Shatin, whose recent work was just nominated for a Grammy. There are two younger faculty composers, both recently tenured. The department has a relatively new PhD program with only a few composition graduates so far; they have gotten jobs at Harvard, Yale, and Oberlin.</p>
<p>The department also has strengths in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and popular music. Like most liberal-arts universities, it doesn’t offer conservatory-style training to undergraduates, but integrates the music major into a broad curriculum. Some music majors are planning careers as music scholars or performers but music is also a popular choice as a double major (there seem to be a lot of science/music double majors, and a fair number of music majors take the premed prerequisites and then go on to med school.)</p>
<p>On the performance side, there are a number of audition-only groups for which a student can receive academic credit: University Singers (the chorus), Chamber Singers (a more elite chorus), a symphony that is made up of students, local professionals, and UVA music faculty, the African Drum and Dance Ensemble, and a variety of jazz and chamber music ensembles. Students can also take private lessons either on a pass/fail basis or (by audition) at a higher level of proficiency for a grade. The performance program is really what has been expanding in the past decade or so, spurred by a partnership between the University and symphony patrons who partially endowed the symphony principal positions. The effect was that these positions have now been filled by national searches, and are no longer adjunct positions held by musicians that happened already to live in Charlottesville. The Jazz program has also recently been growing under a director hired about six years ago. A Marching Band was established in the mid-2000s and “lives” in a separate new building: this may seem far from your interests, but the band provides additional employment for many of the woodwind, brass, and percussion performance faculty and so enhances the attractiveness of UVA to that set of people.</p>
<p>The only real drawback to the Music Department is that it has outgrown its space. It has a historic and centrally located but crowded, insufficiently soundproofed building.</p>
<p>I believe the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music is Matthew Burtner, who is also one of the faculty composers, so he might be a good person to email.</p>
<p>Thank you for the thorough response. It’s nice to know that music technology/computer music is well represented, and the faculty looks amazing.</p>
<p>I had a significant number of friends who were music majors, or who dropped the major, and they all seemed particularly unsatisfied with it. It’s not a conservatory in any way, and if you are seriously considering that kind of route then you should note you will have to pursue conservatory after your four year degree (basically nothing to show for your time at UVA). Just a heads up. OTOH if you are looking for a nice liberal arts degree then UVA is a great place for that. My friends have either done the go to conservatory after graduating thing, or else gone into other fields (one was pre-med, one is now in another state with her fiance, etc).</p>
<p>Hazelorb, music majors who go on to conservatory training after UVA do so on the graduate level, to get an MFA or DFA. They’re not just starting all over again from scratch. That said, somebody who wants to practice his/her instrument 10 hours/day would not do well at UVA or in any liberal-arts music department, of the kind one would find at Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Dartmouth, Princeton, etc. Conservatories offer an extremely focused education, while a university offers a broad education with a lot of distribution requirements and so on. A music major at UVA, like majors in other arts-and-sciences fields, will normally be taking fewer than half his or her courses in music.</p>