OU Honours Howard Goodall at Brighton Degree Ceremony

The composer Howard Goodall was given an honorary doctorate at the Open University’s Brighton degree ceremony on Saturday 19 October.

Howard was presented for the degree by Robert Samuels of the Music Department. Robert’s address to those at the ceremony, who included 350 graduates and their supporters, concluded:

Howard shares the Open University’s commitment to the role of education, including music education, in social justice. In this first year in which we as a university now offer a full degree in music, recruiting musicians from all backgrounds, who make music in all genres, from those making music professionally to those taking up instruments for the first time, we are proud to honour Howard’s commitment to bringing music to every child and every school. His is a passion we share.

In reply, Howard spoke of music’s unique relationship to time: its capacity to recall specific moments in the past, or to shape the time in which it is performed, or even to affect the future long after the passing of its creator. Music, he said, is unpredictable, inexhaustible and endlessly enriching of our lives – just as is the education delivered by The Open University.

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