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Arts feature

How the culture wars are killing Western classical music

Ian Pace on musicology’s culture wars

9 October 2021

9:00 AM

9 October 2021

9:00 AM

Musicology may appear an esoteric profession. But several events in the past few years have pushed musicological debates into the columns of national newspapers, from the American academic who claimed that music theory was a ‘racial ideology’ and should be dismantled, to the Oxford professor who allegedly suggested that studying ‘white European music’ caused ‘students of colour great distress’, to the high-profile resignation of a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, reportedly in response to academic ‘cancel culture’.

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