Music Building
2023
Music at BYU: Where We Began (1964)
Music has been part of Brigham Young University’s story since its earliest days. In 1876, just the second year of Brigham Young Academy, music instruction was introduced to all students, taught personally by Academy principal Karl G. Maeser. With a student body of around 100, the school quickly embraced musical expression. Before long, the Academy choir was performing regularly at weekly devotionals, enriching campus life.
As enrollment grew and academic programs expanded, the music department evolved. In 1901, with 200 students enrolled, it was officially renamed the School of Music. Two years later, in 1903, Brigham Young Academy itself was renamed Brigham Young University under the leadership of President George H. Brimhall.
In 1917, the School of Music was authorized to offer its first academic major in music, marking a significant milestone in its development. Decades later, in 1964, the department found a new home in the newly constructed Harris Fine Arts Center (1964-2020), where it became part of the College of Fine Arts and Communications.
To reflect its growing stature and academic excellence, the department reclaimed the name “School of Music” in 1997, joining the ranks of nationally and internationally recognized programs in music education and performance.
Music Building: Where We Are Now
Edward E. Adams (MA ’91), dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications, remembers meeting with an acoustical consultant in 2016 while preparing for the design of a new music building. Night after night, they attended performances in the Harris Fine Arts Center. Eventually, Adams asked the consultant for his honest assessment.
“Your faculty are outstanding, and your students are exceptional,” the consultant said. “If you had even adequate facilities, you could be the best in the world.”
Today, nothing stands in the way of that potential. The new Music Building opened during Winter Semester 2023, following a three-year construction effort that began in June 2020. Located south of the main parking lot and east of the J. Reuben Clark Law School, the building now houses both academic and performance spaces for the BYU School of Music and welcomes artists and musicians from around the globe.
Spanning 170,000 square feet across four levels, the Music Building is a concerto of architecture and design. It includes:
• Two performance halls
• Five rehearsal halls
• Eleven classrooms
• One state-of-the-art recording studio
• Seventy faculty offices
• Sixty-four student practice rooms
• Two hundred pianos
• Forty distinct performing groups
At the heart of the building is its crown jewel, a vineyard-style concert hall, inspired by the terraced slopes of an Italian vineyard. The hall wraps the audience around the stage in ascending tiers, fostering a sense of intimacy between performer and listener, no audience member sits more than 15 rows from the stage. Taking up all four floors and seating over 1,000 guests, it is the largest vineyard-style concert hall at any university in the United States
