Compose what comes next

Butler’s Master of Music in Composition is a writing-intensive, highly personalized program designed to expand your musical vocabulary, strengthen your craft, and help you build a professional body of work. Through private composition study with dedicated faculty, you’ll receive individualized guidance in a close-knit community that challenges and supports you as you develop your artistic voice.

Your work won’t stay on the page. Student composers have numerous opportunities to hear their original compositions read and performed by Butler students, faculty, and ensembles—including large ensembles within the School of Music and the JCA Composers Orchestra. Along the way, you’ll collaborate across disciplines, build professional connections, and develop the experience and portfolio to pursue opportunities in composition, film scoring, arranging, music engineering, higher education, and more.

Graduates have gone on to pursue doctoral study at leading music schools, release commercial recordings of their original work, and build careers as composers and arts leaders in Indianapolis and beyond.