Overview

Musically excellent…     Academically engaging…     Profoundly Christian…

Bold phrases, highlighted in our public announcements. Significant Expectations. Why emphasize them?

Because it is precisely these goals we have thoughtfully set ourselves and our students in the twenty-first century.

Why?  Because, within a brief span, the Greatbatch School of Music—while maintaining its historic strengths—has been transformed.

How? By a splendid, state-of-the-art facility to house a dynamic musical enterprise. By an extraordinary endowment specifically targeted to establish graduate programs in music. By a thirty-percent expansion of faculty to support our curricula, expanding an experienced and talented group of colleagues. By a student body growing in musical depth and talent, in energy, and in size. In a word, new resources have bred renewed energy, and have combined with longstanding faculty qualifications and experience to produce a new synthesis of ideas, directions, and focus.

Building on the firm foundation of a well-established undergraduate music program, our goal is to foster an environment where talented and well-prepared students work together with a highly-qualified faculty in a nurturing setting to achieve a whole greater than the sum of its parts: fine music-making combined with academic rigor, informed and deepened by Christian perspective.

Many graduate programs achieve musical excellence; many also combine that excellence with serious academic engagement. But Houghton’s intent is to establish a renewed synthesis of disciplined art with thoughtfully reasoned Christian perspective, deliberately connected to the wider world of learning.

Fully accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music since 1946, the Greatbatch School offers the Bachelor of Arts in Music;  the Bachelor of music in Performance, Music Education, & Composition; the Master of Arts in Music; and the Master of Music in Collaborative Performance, Composition, Conducting, and Performance.

Our Mission

Within a Christ-centered, challenging, liberal arts education, The Greatbatch School of Music, Houghton College, endeavors to produce graduates who, through commitment to musical excellence and to intelligent articulation of the integration of faith and music in their lives, can be effective musical practitioners and advocates in the Christian community and in the broader world.

Faculty Goals Statement

Within a Christian environmental setting, the Greatbatch School of Music faculty seek:

1. To promote a musical environment for developing the highest artistic values and a lifelong commitment to musical excellence.
2. To serve students via excellence in their professional work.
3. To provide students with the means for rewarding, fulfilling artistic endeavors.
4. To develop in all students an awareness of the creative dimension of the whole person.
5. To encourage in all students an ongoing commitment to intelligent articulation of the integration of faith and music in their lives, to service as effective musical advocates in the Christian community, and to service as effective Christian witnesses in the musical world.