Music in Liberal Arts Major
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About the Major
The music in liberal arts major is designed for students who wish to be as versatile in their collegiate experience as possible. The degree gives students the opportunity to be involved in ensembles, delve into different musical arenas and combine their music with other majors from around the campus.
Jobs in Music in Liberal Arts
- Music editor
- Composer
- Music instructor
- Researcher
- Music producer
Past Elon Music in Liberal Arts Internships
- Atlantic Records
- Vortex Hollywood
- Satellite Music Group
- N.C. Theatre
- Warner Bros. Music Group
Related Majors
Professors gave graduate the tools and confidence necessary to find her own career path in music
When Julianne Papadopoulos guides small children in music lessons or helps adults with hearing loss find new ways of making and appreciating music, she remembers her experiences at Elon University, where she double majored in music in the liberal arts and psychology.
It was at Elon where the 2019 graduate was given the support and guidance necessary to believe in her abilities and realize she could make a career out of music. Today, she works to instill that same confidence in the people with whom she works — those with cochlear implants and, separately, children under the age of 5.
The reason I chose to keep pursuing music and keep that in my career path was because of the faculty members at Elon in the music department. They were so supportive from day one.
“Some people who lost their hearing later in life think that they’re never going to be able to find that sense of musicianship again or they compare themselves to other musicians with normal hearing or maybe they haven’t had any musical training and think, ‘I am not a musician.’ It’s our job to help give them the confidence to dive into it anyway,” said Papadopoulos, who works as a community music facilitator and research assistant at the Bionic Ear Lab at the University of Southern California. “I’ve felt that way in the music world, but because of my music experiences at Elon, I felt safe enough to dive into it anyway. I’m trying to give people the resources to find that same feeling of courage.”
The same can be said about working with children, which she also does as an early childhood music instructor at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, teaching music on the weekends to children from 7 months to 5 years of age and facilitating lessons alongside their parents.
“It’s the time where you can explore what it means to be a musician in your own way, and you also can guide the parents that there’s not a wrong way to be musical,” she said. “It’s about finding your own sense of expression. When you’re 2 and you’re so creative and silly, you don’t have societal standards telling you to put up your guard yet. You’re free to express yourself, which is what I think music should be about.”
When Papadopoulos entered Elon in 2015, she knew she wanted to study music — she’s always had a love for it, singing in her church choir, playing the clarinet and participating in choir and musicals in high school, which is when she started taking voice lessons — but she was unsure what kind of career could be made from it, which is one of the reasons she chose to double major in another discipline. The music in the liberal arts program was designed to do just that: pair music with a second subject area inside or outside the music department.
Along with the confidence her Elon professors provided, they also spent much time with Papadopoulos talking about career possibilities. Many people, she said, hear “music major” and respond, “What, are you going to be, a performer?”
But, she said, “there are so many more routes.”
Papadopoulos knows from experience that parents may be wary of their children pursuing a degree in music — it doesn’t have a straight-forward career path like degrees in business or nursing. But her music in the liberal arts degree led her to USC and the Bionic Ear Lab, and she is excited to pursue research.
“(Parents) want to hear, ‘I’m going to be this specific person in five years,’ but I think something that is challenging and also really beautiful about the music world is that there are so many different paths you can take,” she said. “I didn’t even know this research position existed and I love it.”
Papadopoulos graduated Elon thinking she was going down the path of becoming a professor of vocal pedagogy, but when she came across the community music master’s degree program at USC, “it was a perfect combination of teaching and understanding music in the context of different communities and learning how to make music more accessible to people,” she said. She earned her master’s from USC in 2022.
She wishes she could comfort all students who major in music and tell them “it’s OK to not know exactly where you’re going as long as you’re equipping yourself with the tools you need.” And Elon, she said, will provide those tools.
“The reason I chose to keep pursuing music and keep that in my career path was because of the faculty members at Elon in the music department,” Papadopoulos said. “They were so supportive from day one, even though I didn’t know exactly what my career path was.
“That environment helped me to feel safe enough to push myself more and feel comfortable to confide in my professors with the things I needed and build confidence in my own musicianship, in thinking, ‘I am good enough to do this.’”
Did You Know?
- It is the only music major at Elon that doesn’t require an audition. The major also allows students to easily earn a double major and develop career paths in any number of disciplines, including music theory, business, history, therapy, and performance.
- Elon offers music-centered study abroad experiences, including a summer program in Los Angeles, winter term travel to Austria for the Lives of the Great Composers course, and a summer program in Florence, Italy, for opera and jazz. Ensembles also play in festivals and on various tours in and beyond the U.S.
- Elon believes in the power of experiential learning, where music theory comes to life through hands-on practice. From ensemble performances to studio recording sessions, student teaching to internships, study abroad to mentored work-study, students have ample opportunities to apply their knowledge and refine their skills.