2015 marked 40 years of music education at City. The first Music degree course was launched in 1975 with a small cohort of excited students.
During the first few weeks of the new term, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was released and the Sex Pistols played their first gig down the road at St. Martin’s School of Art.
From the outset the Department was concerned with music in contemporary multicultural and technological society, the approach was global and interdisciplinary, all set in the thriving musical life of London. Performance was at the heart of the Undergraduate curriculum.
Nowadays everyone claims to be ‘global’ in reach and ‘interdisciplinary’ in outlook, so it is hard to imagine how ground breaking this approach was, but City has always been a place of innovation and risk taking.
There have been many changes over the years. Flares have been replaced with skinny jeans, for example. UK Higher Education has become an altogether different place.
In the academic year 1970-71, there were 621,000 students at University; while in 2007-08 there were 2.5 million students in Higher Education in the UK.
What has remained constant is the rigour of our Music degree programmes which nourish the mind and the soul, the care and attention we give to our students, the enthusiasm and success of our graduates, and our determination to ensure that Music is a vital part of a modern society.
We look forward to hearing your stories and sharing memories. Here’s to our current and past students and colleagues.
From Professor Miguel Mera.
View images on Flickr from our 40th birthday, Saturday 10th October, 2015.
Get in touch!
If you would like to share photos, recordings, or other memories from your time at City then please send them to us at music40@city.ac.uk.
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