Academic literature on the topic 'Music Education Sweden'

AbstractIn Sweden, English is a language with high status, and digitization in particular has made English easily available so that many children learn English outside of school, what is called ‘extramural English’ (Sundqvist and Sylvén 2016), through commercials, music, and different digital media, including online games, YouTube clips, etc.

AbstractThis chapter revisits the ideas of radical empiricism and sensuous scholarship, embedded in current music education research. Focusing on the development of methodological implications of cultural responsiveness and arts-based research methods, the chapter argues for epistemic openness. The discussion is located within the author’s own experiences of course development for Swedish music teacher students in Gambia, field studies in multicultural classrooms in Sweden, and research design that includes the fiddle, opening up for music to ask the questions. Borrowing from anthropological research the concepts of radical empiricism and sensuous scholarship, music education researchers might find useful tools to approach project planning, to perform the analysis of the material and to communicate the results in culturally responsive forms that inform both research and praxis. By studying music transmission with culturally sensitive research methods, this chapter suggests possibilities to do more than observing and reporting. There is a possibility to engage with different knowledge systems and politics, in all types of retrieved material – and to generate inclusive knowledge building.

Within higher education, programmes in choral conducting are offered of varying kinds and at different levels, from dedicated programmes to single courses that are embedded in other music programmes. The choral practice field is varied; choral leadership is partly a generic music competence and partly a profession. The variety and social reach of the choral movement suggest that the educational offering in choral conducting should be manifold in type and quantity in order to supply the practice field with qualified conductors. n this chapter we take a renewed look at material from three previous studies: (1) a mapping of Scandinavian choral leader education, based on document analysis and interviews with tutors and newly graduated conductors; (2) a quantitative survey on choral conducting competencies, where more than 600 conductors in Norway, Sweden, and Germany participated; and (3) an interview study of twenty Norwegian choral conductors on their professional careers. Although the findings from these studies were salient enough, the implications for choral conducting education were not equally clear. The point of departure for this chapter is that this is due to a series of difficult trade-offs, and we ask the question: What dilemmas do we face when educating choral conductors, and how might we understand these in light of the composite data? The material is analysed by drawing on established pedagogic categories, Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (1998), Jansson’s competence model for choral conductors (2018), and Varvarigou and Durrant’s discussion framework for choral conducting (2011).

Several years ago, my husband called me into his studio as he was practicing for an upcoming solo violin concerto performance with the National Symphony. As I entered the room, I noticed three bows lying on the floor. Without a word, he motioned for me to be seated on the sofa. He picked up the first bow and began to play a passage of the music. He set this bow on the floor, picked up the second, and played the same passage. He repeated this process with the last bow. When he finished, he paused and looked at me. I motioned to the middle bow. He nodded in agreement. This was the bow he would use for the performance. Musicians communicate through sound. The wordless exchange of musical ideas described here exemplifies the fine-tuned discrimination of sound that is at the heart of music aptitude. While listening to the repeated musical passage, my husband and I were both aware of the subtle qualities of sound that each bow produced as it was drawn across the strings of the violin. The first had a gutsy, robust sound; the second a melancholy, sweet quality; the third a square cleanliness. We listened, interpretively reflected on these qualities, and decided that melancholy sweetness would best match the mood of the Armenian folk tunes within the solo concerto. Words were not necessary. Obviously, this level of musical communication is quite sophisticated. It relies on years of musical training, listening, and interpretive understanding. However, if you layer away the training and skills, we arrive at the underlying discrimination of differences in sound. The discrimination of sound, prior to any formal training, is where music aptitude begins. Music exists through sound. Sound develops into music through combinations of rhythm, loudness, pitch, and the different qualities of these sounds. Music psychologists define the capacity to sense these musical components as music aptitude. The more discriminately one senses subtle differences in these components, the higher one’s music aptitude. Music aptitude combines inherent musical capacities with listening skills that may develop without formal training or education.