The Music Department houses a number of rich resources for student performers and scholars. There are piano practice rooms, a concert hall, electroacoustic composition studios, a sound studies lab, ethnomusicology lab, and collection of historical instruments. The Music Building also houses the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, the primary repository of musical materials at Harvard. For information about fellowships, prizes, and departmental student organizations, click here.
The Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library
The Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library is the primary repository of musical materials at Harvard. The library’s general collections include about 91,000 books, 143,000 scores, 83,000 sound recordings and video formats, and nearly 1,080 periodical titles that support research in a wide variety of musical disciplines including historical musicology, music theory, ethnomusicology, composition, and historically informed performance practice. In addition, the Isham Memorial Library houses a collection of 8,250 rare books and scores and 31,200 microforms.
Other music collections at Harvard include those of the Houghton Library (antiquarian materials); the Harvard Theatre Collection (documents and artifacts for the study of theatre, dance, and opera); Lamont Media in the Lamont Library (circulating recordings and undergraduate materials); the Andover-Harvard Theological Library (hymns and hymnology); Widener Library (materials related to A.B. Lord’s folklore studies); and The Hiphop Archive at Harvard University (part of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research).
John Knowles Paine Concert Hall (Music Building)
The 437-seat Paine Concert Hall is at the heart of the Music Department’s performance activities. The Hall houses student class recitals and concerts by the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence, the Harvard Group for New Music, the Bach and Mozart Society Orchestras, and chamber ensembles. Hydra electroacoustic concerts, solo recitals, world music and jazz performances take place there, as do lectures, conferences, and special events. The Hall, built in 1914, is an historic structure that has recently been refurbished. The acoustician Wallace Sabine, who designed Boston’s Symphony Hall, oversaw its acoustic design.
Collection of Musical Instruments
The Harvard University Collection of Instruments began with the donation of the Isham viols in 1949. It comprises objects including both Western and non-Western instruments, the Isham Collection, and a small group of musical miscellany. The Collection represents the cultures and traditions of many parts of the world including Europe, North America, the British Isles, and the mid- and far-east, especially China. The objects range from rare 17th-century lutes to Japanese kotos. Here you’ll find a piano made by Streicher & Sons of Vienna in 1869; the piano Brahms would have played. The collection also features clavichords, a William Dowd harpsichord, and a Dolmetsch clavichord once played by virtuoso Gustav Leonhardt.
Go to Collection of Instruments WEBSITE
Concert Venues
Harvard has three primary concert halls that are available to students and the general public. John Knowles Paine Hall (see above) is located on the second floor of the music building, and is a concert hall that seats 437. Other performance venues include the beautiful 1000-seat Sanders Theatre and Lowell Hall (seats 352), which is frequently used for jazz. Several of the Harvard houses also offer opportunities for musical performance. For instance, Dudley House hosts several graduate student music groups including a chorus, orchestra, jazz band, and traditional music ensemble.
Many of the Harvard houses also have common rooms that can be used for music performance, and multi-purpose areas such as University Hall’s Faculty Room, the Barker Center Thompson Room, the Arts at 29 Garden, and the courtyard of the Harvard Arts Museums are used for concerts as well.
Office for the Arts
The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) is a central resource for arts information, opportunities, programs, and support at Harvard University. The OFA runs co-curricular arts courses such as Skills for Singing (for students who would like to improve their fundamental skills for choral singing). Learning From Performers is a visiting artist program that gives students opportunities to interact with professionals in workshops, master classes, informal discussions and other educational forums. The OFA also produces an annual, campus-wide arts festival.
Grants for artistic projects, fellowships for emerging undergraduate artists, music lesson subsidies (for students studying privately with a teacher off-campus), a jazz master residency program, and venue management and ticketing services/Harvard Box Office are some of the other initiatives sponsored by the OFA.
Sound Labs and Studios
Shelemay Sound Media Lab
The Shelemay Sound Media Lab serves the Harvard Music Department’s faculty and students, providing assistance with faculty coursework, graduate dissertations and research, as well as undergraduate theses in music and other projects. It is located in Music Building 200A.
The SSML is a space to edit and review digital multimedia projects using stereo and 5.1 configurations, as well as listen to a wide range of music recorded in multiple analogue and digital formats using its state-of-the-art and legacy audio equipment. The SSML hosts a number of workshops and listening events throughout the academic year. These workshops feature various external guests, Harvard staff or faculty presenting on a large number of ‘sound media’ topics. The SSML also supports the creation of sound media recordings by providing a wide range of audio-recording and production equipment to Harvard affiliates.
Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition (HUSEAC)
Harvard’s electroacoustic music resources are concentrated in the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition (HUSEAC) located in Paine Hall Rooms 22, 31, 32, and 33, with an office in Room 21.
Each Mac-based workstation has four or eight channel spatialization capability. Room 33 adds 7.1 Surround Sound, DV and HDV video editing with a DVD mastering suite. All workstations run Pro Tools, Nuendo, Max/MSP+Jitter, the IRCAM Forum suite, Csound, and much more. Our vintage Serge and Buchla analog modular synthesizers, as well as a variety of classic outboard signal processors, are housed in Room 22. The HUSEAC facilities are open to graduate composition students and those enrolled in electroacoustic music seminars.
The Hydra loudspeaker orchestra is a sound projection system designed for the performance of electroacoustic music with or without the participation of instrumentalists. A loudspeaker orchestra consists of loudspeakers distributed throughout a performance space used for the spatial diffusion of an electroacoustic work.
Harvard Group for New Music
Established in 1984, Harvard Group for New Music brings together the community of graduate composers at Harvard University. Weekly colloquia provide a platform for critical discussion with presentations from current students as well as guest speakers. Concerts by some of the world’s best musicians showcase members’ newest music throughout the year.
Piano Technical Services
Piano Technical Services (PTS) tunes, maintains, repairs, restores and rebuilds the collection of approximately 200 pianos in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Our primary responsibility is to the Harvard University Music Department where approximately one-quarter of the keyboard collection resides. We also service Sanders Theatre, the Houses, and the many other departments where keyboard instruments are located.
The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard
The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard was founded by the late Paul Fromm in 1952. Since 1972, it has been located at Harvard University where it has operated in partnership with the Harvard University Music Department. Over the course of its existence, the Fromm Foundation has commissioned over 400 new compositions and their performances. The Fromm Foundation has also sponsored hundreds of new music concerts and concert series, among them Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music, American Composers Orchestra, and the Fromm Concert Series at Harvard University. The foundation has also supported a Fromm Visiting Professorship for established composers in the Department of Music, and the Paul Fromm Composer-in-Residence program at the American Academy in Rome.