David Allen, who has died aged 72, was by turns scholar, educator, music critic, entrepreneur and smallholder.
Born in Bexleyheath, south-east London, Dave was the only child of Colin Allen, who worked for the local electricity board, and his wife, Betty (nee Picket), who came from a local family of timber merchants. He was educated at St Dunstan’s college, Catford, and in 1972 went to St Catherine’s College, Oxford, then the university’s newest college, to study music (where I first met him, as a fellow undergraduate); he was the first in his family to be university educated. As St Catherine’s, opened only a decade earlier, had no music fellow, he was tutored at Magdalen by David Wulstan, founder of the early music ensemble the Clerkes of Oxenford.
Dave’s special interest was baroque music. He was a colourful character, burly and bearded, and eccentric in manner and dress (sporting a cloak and silver-topped cane) and was nicknamed “Captain Beefheart” by younger contemporaries. He served among the first student representatives on the college governing body chosen by its founder, the historian Alan Bullock. In 1974, he starred at the Oxford Playhouse as the faux aesthetic poet Bunthorne in Patience by Gilbert & Sullivan; and was described as “a performer to cherish” by the Oxford Mail. Despite demand, he never appeared onstage again.
After graduating, Dave stayed in Oxford to research the racy 17th-century composer Alessandro Stradella. Then in the late 70s he took up a teaching post at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, from where he was invalided home to Bexleyheath with hepatitis C.
After a lengthy recovery, in the 1980s he established himself as a home tutor and co-partner in a youth training scheme designed to get young people into training and work in his south London community; he was also the music critic for the North Kent Press.
At this time he met his future wife Ann Dixon, who survives him. Together, in the late 80s they formed a decade-long association with Braziers Park, a community college and educational charity in Oxfordshire, where Dave became director of studies.
Around 2000 he and Ann moved to Ceredigion in Wales, to a smallholding where Ann keeps sheep. Dave involved himself in the university town of Lampeter, and learned basic Welsh. David Wulstan lived nearby, and when he died in 2017, Dave acted as an executor, distributing Wulstan’s literary and music estate to interested institutions.
In recent years, Dave suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, but responded to music nearly to the end.
