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The College of Fine Arts, which included the Department (now School) of Music as one of its academic components, was launched in 1938.  Founding Dean Dr. E. William Doty was himself a musician and professor of organ, and for more than 25 years he was both Dean of the College and Chairman of the Music Department.  Having studied in Germany between the wars, Dean Doty had a keen appreciation of German scholarship in music, and as the fledgling music history program grew, he sought always to have a German or German-trained musicologist on the faculty.  In 1942 he hired Donald J. Grout as an associate professor, but when Grout was drafted into the military near the end of World War II in 1945, he left Texas and moved on to Cornell University following the war.  Not long after, Grout was succeeded at Texas in 1946 by his teacher Otto Kinkeldey, who had earned his Ph.D. in Berlin and is widely regarded as the founder of American musicology.  The yearly prize awarded by the American Musicological Society for the best book in musicology is named after Otto Kinkeldey. Early librarians at U.T. in charge of the music collection recall receiving lists of "must-have" acquisitions from both Grout and Kinkeldey, the latter having already given distinguished service for more than a decade as head of the music division of the New York Public Library.

In 1951, Vienna-born Paul Pisk followed Kinkeldey as the head of musicology at Texas, where he taught until his "retirement" in 1963 (he then taught at several other schools before his death in California in 1990; his son still lives in Austin).  With his interests in composition and performance as well as musicology and his personal acquaintance with nearly all the great European composers of the first half of the 20th century, Pisk was a legendary figure at Texas.  His name is now associated with the prize for the best paper delivered by a graduate student at the yearly meeting of the American Musicological Society.

It was during his tenure that the Music Department received a green light to offer the Ph.D. in musicology, and the first degrees were awarded to Andrew Broekema and Lloyd P. Farrar in 1962.  For a time, the degree made no distinction between musicology and music theory; the first Ph.D. in musicology "with theory emphasis" was earned in 1974 by Charles W. Ward, who since that time has enjoyed a career as music critic for the Houston Chronicle. Other German musicologists on the faculty have included Hans-Heinz Draeger (d. 1968), Fritz Oberdoerffer (d. 1979), after whom the Hewitt-Oberdoerffer Award given by the Southwest Chapter of the AMS is named, and Hanns-Bertold Dietz (since 1963; now professor emeritus).

The Early Music Ensemble (then known as the Collegium Musicum) was founded in the late 1960s, and for it the Department purchased replicas of early instruments, many of which are still in use today.  Since the mid-1970s the musicology faculty has counted as one of its distinctions a specialist in each of the major periods of music history, and the arrival of a full-time Americanist in fall 2000 completed the spectrum.

The first courses in non-western music were taught by John W. Grubbs (now emeritus), who joined the faculty in 1966 and had studied with Mantle Hood at U.C.L.A.  For a number of years he taught a two-semester course on world music as MUS 642, in addition to specializations in Baroque music and in the art song.  In 1974 came the first professor of ethnomusicology, Gerard Béhague, and the first Ph.D. in ethnomusicology went to John M. Schechter in 1982.  Two additional appointments in ethnomusicology, Stephen M. Slawek in 1983 and Veit Erlmann in 1997, brought the faculty to its present strength and broad spectrum of interests, and today a wide variety of ethnomusicological performance ensembles, including the large Javanese gamelan, flourish along with the Early Music Ensemble.

One of the most exciting periods in the history of our division comprised the years 1968-1971, when in the spring semesters of 1968, 1969, and 1971, the musicology faculty ran a graduate seminar called "Current Thought in Musicology" which brought a dozen distinguished speakers to the department each spring.  Each visitor gave a Friday afternoon public lecture and a Saturday morning class for those enrolled in the course, and each week a Friday night party was enjoyed by all.  The chance to hear and interact with some of the greatest figures in our field, one by one, was an unforgettable experience for students and faculty alike.  Contributions from nine of the speakers in the spring of 1971 were edited by John W. Grubbs and published in 1976 by U. T. Press as Current Thought in Musicology, a book whose essays continue to be cited.  All thirty-six speakers and their topics still comprise a stunning list.

Besides their teaching and research, faculty in the Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology have also made substantial administrative contributions to the University of Texas.  Rebecca A. Baltzer served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School 1982-86; John W. Grubbs served as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School 1986-96; Gerard Béhague chaired the Department of Music 1980-89; Michael Tusa served as Acting Director of the School of Music 1999-2001 and is now Associate Director; and Charles Roeckle was Associate Dean for Student Affairs in the College of Fine Arts, then Acting Dean of the College, 1998-2000, and is now Deputy to the President.

The University of Texas has twice hosted the national meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, in 1977 and 1999.  In fall 1989 the joint national meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory brought some 1400 musicologists and theorists to Austin and U.T. from around the U.S. and across the world.

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