6. University of Southern California Thornton School of Music – Los Angeles, CA
Notable Faculty: Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Morten Lauridsen, Andrew Norman, Donald Crockett
Led by some of the prominent composers working in today’s musical world, including the immensely popular band composer Frank Ticheli, the Grammy-winning composer Stephen Hartke, and an accomplished generation of rising composers, including Andrew Norman and Ted Hearne, the University of Southern California is one of the most interesting programs in the nation today. Possibly the most desirable composition studio in all of California, students of the program have won many of the most prestigious prizes in music composition, including the ASCAP Morton Gould Prize as well as the BMI Student Composer award, and have gone on to respectable careers in concert and commercial music industries.
Their most famous alumnus is probably the composer to the Battlestar Galactica series.
5. Cornell University (Graduate Only) – Ithaca, NY
Notable Faculty: Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra
Students of this institution, accepted only at the graduate level, are allotted stipends that are paramount to a starting salary to focus solely on their artistic creations. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky heads a department of composers who regularly achieve and maintain residencies at artist colonies, acceptances into exclusive summer music programs, and prizes in the highest volume competitions. Although there is no performance department at this school for the composers to channel their music into, the institution hosts a very impressive contemporary ensemble that performs the works of the student composers.
Listen to the Faculty: Check out Steven Stucky’s August 4, 1964
4. The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance – Ann Arbor, MI
Notable Faculty: Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, Erik Santos, Paul Schoenfield
Led by Grammy-winning composer Michael Daugherty and MacArthur fellow Bright Sheng, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor has long been considered the midwest’s highest authority for contemporary classical composition. Founded on a tradition of American classical pluralism by Professor Emeritus William Bolcom, the composers here regularly find themselves turning out music of variety, thriving in an atmosphere guided by principles of both the traditional past and the populist present.
Alumni of the department regularly find employment in top academies and universities throughout the world, with several of their students going on to very successful careers as established composers, like this guy.
Listen to the Faculty: Check out Michael Daugherty’s Grammy-winning Metropolis Symphony
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The concept of “top 10” lists for music schools is problematic for many reasons, especially for composers. In the case of composition, every student composer is different. If a student’s taste and interests are not aligned with the faculty at your top schools, then do your ranks apply to that student? If this student is really happy studying with a great teacher at a university that is not listed on your top ten, then that student would probably disagree with your ranking. Composition is more of a philosophical study than a trade school. Faculty prestige/large endowments/abundant resources might help you back up your claim but that does not mean that these schools are right for everyone.
I think your idea to list great music schools (for all disciplines) would be much more beneficial if you excluded your “top 10” opinions. Here’s why:
1) There are hundreds of music schools enrolling thousands, perhaps millions of students. Based on those numbers, your top ten lists don’t apply to most students. If you were to create a compendium of great music schools, you could write SO much more.
2) You will be doing prospective students in all disciplines a much greater service by informing them about more than ten options.
3) Musical style should be taken in consideration for composition schools in particular. A student who wants to compose X type of music probably would probably not do well in a school that primarily focuses on Y type of music.
You are limiting yourself as a writer and limiting your readers by only making “top 10’s”. If you provide a more comprehensive list of more than ten schools, it will be a win-win for you and your readers.
Hi Jeremy, I want to learn to compose music for movies such as spiderman, x-men, lord of the rings. Who are the best composition teachers you know for this type of music?
The USC screen scoring program. Not even a debate that it’s tops for visual media composition.
Agree with your comment that these could be framed as “notable” and focus more on why they are worth considering VS whether they are top-ten or not. Much of it is driven by SEO optimization – “best”, “top ten” is what people tend to search for.
And in composition it seems to me the key is to find a faculty that can have a deep “coaching” philosophy to help bring out the best in young composers and tease out their unique “voice”.
Jeremy, hi! My son (14 years) is in love with music and wants to study composition. I´m starting to explore what this really means. I liked your comments about the top 10 and the idea of “one sits shouldnt fit all”. Congratulations!
Do you have any recommendations for summer camps, where he can start understamd as well if this is his passion for next step regarding school?
thank you in advance!
To followup on my last comment:
Once you eliminate the “top 10” idea, you can write about some great schools that are currently absent from your list. Columbia, Harvard, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and Stanford come to mind.
Then you can include European schools like Huddersfield, King’s College, K.U. Graz, various Musikhochschules, Paris Conservatory, and countless others.
And one correction: Steven Stucky is retired from Cornell and is only teaching at Juilliard. You also should add Matthias Pintscher to the Juilliard faculty list.
You should consider Oberlin as well.
I’ll also chime in – McGill has a great program.
And how about Eastman school? Why is not here!
VERY SHOCKED that U. Missouri, Kansas City is not in the top five. Zhou Long, Chen Yi, James Mobberley, Paul Rudy lead the 60 composition majors. Accolades abound and UMKC is significantly more esteemed (Pulitzer’s, Guggenheim’s, Rome, American Academy, Fromm, etc.) than many of the mentioned schools in the area of composition.
Bang on a Can co-founder, Julia Wolfe, got her PhD in music composition at Princeton, so they are not all from Yale. Also, Steven Mackey returned to the faculty in July 2015 after serving for many years as Chair of the department.
Any list of music schools with great composition programs that doesn’t include Eastman (but includes Bard?!?) is not to be taken seriously.
Shocking that Eastman isn’t even on this list!
Update: Stucky is no longer at Cornell and Sierra is in phase retirement