When the music stopped

The closure of her university department led musicologist Alexandra Wilson to reflect on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism

PICTURE, IF YOU WILL, A PROFESSOR’S OFFICE in Oxford. You will no doubt imagine a sumptuously appointed room with a sofa and armchairs, floor-to-ceiling books, perhaps some priceless art, and sash windows overlooking a carefully manicured lawn. This office, however, was at the city’s other university, so it bore no resemblance to stereotype. Perhaps six-feet-by-eight, there was barely space for a desk, a filing cabinet and two plastic bucket chairs. But for 19 years it was my work “home” and good things happened there. Books were written, undergraduates guided through their dissertations, PhD students coaxed over the finishing line. I arrived at Oxford Brookes University as a music lecturer in 2005, steadily working my way up to being made professor in 2019. The School of Arts was in a 1990s…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2024

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