John Casken Awarded Honorary Doctorate Degree

One of the UK’s leading composers, John Casken, was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Birmingham University. Casken was invited to accept this award in honour of his contribution to the music world as well as his strong connection with the University itself.

Casken attended the University of Birmingham on both an undergraduate and postgraduate level, studying composition with John Joubert and Peter Dickinson. He later became a lecturer at the university in the 1970’s. Since then, Casken has achieved a great amount of success as a composer both here in the UK and across the world. Casken recently retired from his position as Professor of Music at the University of Manchester.

John Casken was admitted by the Senate of the University to the degree of Doctor of Music honoris causa on the 14th of July 2011.  In his acceptance speech, he issued a challenge:

“Universities are important centres of learning, a force for good, places where the future of the country could be shaped and reshaped. But now, they are under threat, forced into competition with one another, politicians look at the future of Higher Education with market-place myopia, and students are seen as consumers. The issue of tuition fees has not been thought through, and Arts and Humanities funding has been cut. Outside universities, funding of the arts generally has taken a battering, music teaching in schools may not survive, libraries face closure. And yet, a footballer can earn in one week what an arts organisation might only dream about for its annual funding, and one man’s bonus is a community’s new theatre, concert hall, gallery or library.

What can you do about this? Well, I’m not inciting you to rise up, even though this is Bastille Day. Even if you don’t find yourselves working in the arts in some capacity or in teaching, I hope you will be strenuous in your support for their cause. You have studied Arts and Humanities subjects in a country that doesn’t like its artists, writers and composers to be too challenging (but how we love our celebrities),   where the easily assimilated often seems the norm, and where we’re quick to move on to the next new thing. If you are involved in writing, creating, or performing, and your work enables you to bring something that is beyond the everyday, is challenging, and brings about something of beauty in what is frankly a cruel age, be proud to do that. As the great composer Sir Michael Tippett (another Honorary D.Mus. of this University) once said: “if it’s real, it will last”. The arts and a deep awareness of culture are so crucial to the good of this country: they say so much about who and what we are, and you as arts graduates of this University can, in your various ways, ensure that people get the message. The other message, of course, is that universities and future students need our support. So, when you can, support Birmingham as it moves forward in what will undoubtedly be difficult times ahead.”

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