About Us

Music is a field with many challenging and fulfilling career opportunities. Xavier's music graduates go on to hold positions as music teachers for all ages in schools, and as organists and choir directors, performers, private studio music instructors, and in many roles in arts organizations and businesses. By taking interdisciplinary studies in the Williams College of Business, students can lay the foundation for careers in arts administration. Other Xavier graduates continue studying music in graduate programs or perform professionally in jazz/pop bands or professional orchestras.

Success in this wide array of musical careers is due to the emphasis on key skills contained in the music program:

• Hearing, identifying and working conceptually with the elements of music such as rhythm, melody, harmony, structure, timbre, and texture.
• Developing an ability to read and realize musical notation.
• Learning compositional processes, esthetic properties of style, and the ways these shape and are shaped by artistic and cultural forces.
• Exploring a wide selection of musical literature, and the principal eras, genres, and cultural sources.
• Developing and defending musical judgments.

Students benefit from individually guided curriculum mentored by faculty in the student's primary area of study. Music classes, especially in the upper levels are small, allowing students to interact regularly with faculty. In addition, Xavier's artist faculty members are drawn from the top performing organizations in Cincinnati. Faculty members have a wide-range of research interests, including electronic music, 19th-century music, Baroque choral performance studies, new compositional techniques and much more.

Our Facilities

Housed in Edgecliff Hall, the Department of Music features a lecture hall, large rehearsal room, multi-purpose rehearsal studio, several private lesson studios, networked piano lab, state-of-the-art music/composition/technology lab, and the Long Recital Hall. Edgecliff also contains eight practice modules.

Larger performances, including recitals and concerts, are held in the Gallagher Student Center Theater and Bellarmine Chapel. Ensembles frequently perform in other venues throughout the greater Cincinnati metropolitan area.