Celebrating Music at Birkbeck
Pauline Green reflects on the long and rich history of music studies at Birkbeck.
Associate Lecturer, Pauline Green, reflects on the long and rich history of music studies at Birkbeck.
Music courses have been a part of the Birkbeck programme for many years; Birkbeck (or alt least one of its forerunners, the London ‘Joint Committee‘ tutorial classes) first started offering music courses in 1909, and I have been teaching on and organising non-accredited, certificate and occasional BA and MA modules since 1984. Sadly, due to falling enrollment, music will no longer be offered as a separate subject at Birkbeck after this year.
Looking back, there have been many visible successes: students have gone on to take first and higher degrees at King’s, Goldsmiths and elsewhere; many have been able to move into music-related jobs; some have produced albums of their own compositions. For all, the most important thing has been to study a subject they have loved all their lives.
Music at the Westonbirt Summer School played an important role not just as a subject for study, but also in performance, with the music tutors giving a concert on the first night, being involved in running a choir during the week, and contributing to the final night’s cabaret. Orpheus, Beethoven, Mozart and many more (much to their surprise) took part in comedy sketches as a finale to the study of their work during the week.
There has been an excellent team of associate lecturers, experts in their fields, teaching music appreciation and composition. We all know that teaching adults is a wonderfully civilised business, and in music, the range of skills and experience that they bring to the classroom makes for particularly stimulating classes, when classical meets jazz meets rock, for instance, to compose in the style of Bach, or explore contemporary opera!
My thanks to my illustrious predecessors Geoffrey Bush and Roderick Swanston, and others before my time; to our many long-serving and loyal tutors working far beyond the call of duty, to our excellent administrators past and present, and to all the students who have made studying and teaching music at Birkbeck such a joy. I wish you all good luck in your continued study of music and hope there will still be some music-related events in Birkbeck in the future.
Pauline Greene