Housed in the recently remodeled Edgecliff Hall, the Department of Music & Theatre features three classrooms, band rehearsal room, multipurpose dance studio, eight studios for private lessons, 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 and Bellarmine Chapel. Ensembles frequently perform in other venues throughout the greater Cincinnati metropolitan area.
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 music administration. Other Xavier graduates continue studying music in graduate programs, or perform professionally in jazz/pop bands or professional orchestras. Some students have gone on to arrange music for jazz and pop bands.
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, aesthetic 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.
Benefit from individually guided curriculum mentored by faculty in the student’s primary area of study. Music students learn with our expert faculty who are scholars and performers in all areas of music:
- Musicology
- Music theory
- Orchestration
- Composition
- Conducting
- Performance studies
- Jazz arranging and improvisation
- Jazz theory
- Electronic music
- Dance
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 composers Richard Strauss and Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 19th century music, Baroque choral performance studies, new compositional techniques and much more.