What does our department offer?
The Department of Musicology offers a rich and diverse curriculum spanning the history of Western art music, ethnomusicology, and music cognition. Courses invite students to explore a wide range of questions: What drives stylistic change in music—evolution or revolution? What are the underlying principles that govern musical syntax, and can music truly be considered a language?
From a theoretical perspective, we examine how notes and rhythms combine to create meaning and affect. From a cognitive angle, we ask how humans perceive music and why it moves us so deeply. A historical lens prompts inquiry into music’s ability to express emotional states and reflect cultural or socio-political realities.
Students also engage with broader issues: Do inherently different musical cultures share universal traits? Is there a uniquely Jewish or Israeli music, or is it more appropriate to speak of music within Jewish or Israeli cultural contexts? What defines the boundaries—and the overlaps—between popular, folk, and art music? And how do music and gender shape and inform one another?
Our faculty includes leading scholars in European art music (from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century), psychoacoustics and music cognition, Jewish and Israeli musical traditions, popular and folk music(s), historiography, aesthetics, semiotics, and beyond. Together, they offer students a dynamic environment in which to study music as a cultural, intellectual, and human phenomenon.
About the Department
Founded in 1965 by Professor Alexander Ringer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, the Musicology Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was the first department of its kind in Israel. Within a decade of its existence it boasted distinguished faculty members such as Israel Adler, Bathja Bayer, Josef Tal, Dalia Cohen, Ruth Katz (both Cohen and Katz were the 2012 recipients of the Israel Prize in music), Amnon Shiloah, Jehoash Hirshberg, Roger Kamien and Don Harrán. Then as in nowadays the Department seeks to advance interdisciplinary research of music as a multifaceted phenomenon whose manifestations proliferate across social, political, and ethnic borders.
The department of musicology also maintains a strong alliance with the Jewish Music Research Center, an academic institution fully dedicated to the documentation, research and publication of scholarly materials about Jewish music.
Music ensembles and Concerts
Several departmental ensembles expose students, faculty, and other members of the academic community to various musical repertories, both as participants and as audiences: all students, for example, have the opportunity to participate in the University Orchestra and in the University Choir, as well as a year-long workshop devoted to the study and performance of Gamelan music. Moreover, our Monday Concert Series has been running for more than four decades, featuring students, professors, and some of the leading musicians in the country (almost) every Monday at 13:00 (free admittance; see the season at a glance here).
Unique Department Activities:
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Monday Noon Concert Series
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Traditional Indonesian Gamelan Workshop
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Hebrew University Orchestra
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Hebrew University Choir
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Departmental Seminar and study days, regularly hosting leading scholars from around the world
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Close working relationships with musical institutions in the city and nationwide, including orchestras, the Israeli Opera, and more