The Music Department offers a program exploring the history, theory, literature, performance and cross-cultural study of music.
Music has always played a central role at Mount Holyoke College. All incoming students learn to sing the Alma Mater with the Glee Club, the Family and Friends concerts are a highlight for visitors each Fall and no commencement is complete without the Baccalaureate Concert.
Music has always played a central role at Mount Holyoke College. From Family and Friends concerts to Vespers and the African Opera series, the music department has developed unique musical traditions that are now central to campus life.
Serving as the home of the Music department, Pratt Hall is a state-of-the-art facility that is still respectful of its history. Full of light and usable space, it is organized in a way that makes it easy to locate classrooms, library, practice space, and offices/studios. The building contains: a virtual acoustic room, 14 teaching studio/offices, 12 practice rooms, 3 classrooms, keyboard lab, 2 performance/rehearsal spaces, and a library with holdings for music and dance.
The college owns a variety of clarinets, piccolos, cellos, a double bass and much more that can be borrowed by students currently enrolled in department ensembles. Students interested in borrowing these instruments should approach their ensemble directors.
In addition, students looking to rent instruments for use during their time at Mount Holyoke should approach the following businesses:
Two Agbadza sets (sogo, kidi, kagan), one atsimevu, two stands, two totodzi, one kloboto, 5 axatse and 5 gankogui. Students can borrow/sign out the key to the drum closet, which is kept in the music library.
In addition to many modern pianos, Mount Holyoke owns a wide variety of other keyboard instruments.
A four-manual electro-pneumatic action instrument by Hutchings/Skinner is located in the front of the sanctuary in Abbey Memorial Chapel.
Elevated in its own balcony on the back wall of Abbey Memorial Chapel is a two-manual mechanical action instrument by C.B. Fisk.
In Pratt Hall, there is a five-octave Viennese fortepiano (an ancestor of the modern piano) by Peter Fisk & Jacob Kaeser.
There is also a French double harpsichord by William Dowd.
Aside from the small remainder of the Pratt Music Library’s vinyl record holdings, the department of music also owns a collection of nearly 5,000 classic jazz vinyl recordings, including a number of 78-rpms, donated to Mount Holyoke College from the collection of Willis Drake by his daughter Nancy Drake ’73. This collection is still being catalogued and does not circulate.
Happening at Mount Holyoke
Mount Holyoke’s Ben Geyer loves music for its role as a window into people’s mindsets; he’s also written a foundational textbook focusing on equitable music theory curriculum and implementation.
For Colin Britt, new faculty member at Mount Holyoke College, choral music is a calling, both professionally and even physically.
The latest production in Mount Holyoke’s African opera series will debut on campus in April.
The Music Department offers a program exploring the history, theory, literature, performance and cross-cultural study of music.
