In her study of music making in the Edwardian novel, Cecilia Björkén-Nyberg argues that the invention and development of the player piano had a significant effect on the perception, performance and appreciation of music during the period. In contrast to existing devices for producing music mechanically such as the phonograph and gramophone, the player piano granted its operator freedom of individual expression by permitting the performer to modify the tempo. Because the traditional piano was the undisputed altar of domestic and highly gendered music making, Björkén-Nyberg suggests, the potential for intervention by the mechanical piano’s operator had a subversive effect on traditional notions about the status of the musical work itself and about the people who were variously defined by their relationship to it. She examines works by Dorothy Richardson, E.M. Forster, Henry Handel Richardson, Max Beerbohm and Compton Mackenzie, among others, contending that Edwardian fiction with music as a subject undermined the prevalent antithesis, expressed in contemporary music literature, between a nineteenth-century conception of music as a means of transcendence and the increasing mechanisation of music as represented by the player piano. Her timely survey of the player piano in the context of Edwardian commercial and technical discourse draws on a rich array of archival materials to shed new light on the historically conditioned activity of music making in early twentieth-century fiction.

In the Swedish compulsory school system there is a trend towards increased student influence. School ideologists have for at least ten years strongly emphasised this issue. This tendency is in line with a more general direction in Western societies, which in many aspects has moved toward individualisation. Based on these developments, the main reason for undertaking the presents study was to contribute to the discussion about different aspects of learning, which have as their starting point the issue of how adolescents experience musical learning. The study moves in and between the two fields of musical learning in school and in leisure time, and the data consists of seven group conversations carried out with eighth and ninth graders in secondary school. The analysis is undertaken in three steps, each one of which represents a gradually increasing level of abstraction. The theory is grounded on two different areas which have some common aspects, namely theories of modernity and philosophy of music education. The results show that value related issues such as preference and interpretation in the greatest possible extent should be left to the students, and the teacher should instead provide help to students by giving them tools for expression, such as training skills and providing a suitable milieu for musicing. Adolescents give expression to an apprehension that an important task of the school subject music is to expose musical genres and activities, whereupon the students can then choose what suits them. This way of acquiring music does not correspond to the way in which students assimilate music in everyday contexts and highlights a contradiction between how they legitimise musical learning in school and in leisure time. In their leisure time, students acquire preferences for music in an unsystematic and random manner. Their discussions strongly emphasise a search for music “to call their own”. Furthermore, the study shows that learning often occurs in situations where it is not intentional, for example when music listening is a background activity, but still an analysis of musical parameters takes place in an unconscious matter. Some of the adolescents consider ability to collaborate as the most important knowledge that comes out of music education in school. This attitude can be seen as a move from content to form. Two main discourses were identified: the discourse music and the discourse the school subject music. The discourse music is wide and embraces music in leisure time as well as in school. It consists of listening and musicing. The discourse the school subject music is narrow and legitimised only through its position as a school subject. The study also shows that musical learning has a therapeutical dimension and can be considered as a means to strengthen the self. This function seems to be an important end in musical activities. Finally, modern aesthetical values were applied to a post modern context, which implies that the aesthetics of modernity is still alive, and occupying a new body. Music educators in schools ought to consider the above outlined modernised conditions for musical learning, and thereby reflect upon the implications they might bring for music education.

This article presents an analysis of video documentation of music teaching in Swedish schools. The article is based on a larger research project, funded by The Swedish Research Council, the purpose of which has been to study how market aesthetics and students’ everyday culture are applied to the teaching of music. The introduction presents a background for the study's focus on music teaching in relation to issues of student influence. Next, the theoretical and methodological starting points are presented. With discourse psychological microanalysis as a point of departure, the ideological dilemma that has emerged in the analysis of the videos is then identified and discussed. In addition, the different types of subject positions contained in the studied discursive practice are problematized. The article concludes with a discussion of a number of factors that contribute to the establishment of ideological dilemmas in school practitioners of music education.

This article is based on a larger research project with the purpose to study how market aesthetics and student’s music culture are expressed in the Swedish music classroom. The empirical material consists of video observations of classroom activities in secondary school settings in Sweden. The theoretical framework consists of poststructuralist and social constructionist theory combined with theories of late modernity, while our methodological point of departure is discourse analysis. Some important analytical concepts are identity, dominance, governance and knowledge formation. Three different strategies for incorporating market aesthetics and students’ music culture into music education were identified: learning about, reflecting on and applying. An ideological dilemma occurred when the fostering mission of school was confronted with the will to meet the students’ demands for freedom of expression. The results of the project also suggest that standardised and regulated forms of activity were counterproductive to creativity in music making. Six different strategies of gentle governance in the music classroom were identified. Popular music was presented by the teachers in a way analogous to the canon of art music that is predominant in the teaching of music history at school.

In this paper recent findings about how the lesson content is changing at Swedish community music and art schools is discussed. The change is not a consequence of active strategies for change but as a course of different tendencies in late modernity. The teachers are experiencing a decreasing influence of their own teaching practise. This is explained as an effect of a more democratic approach where their students both take and want a greater impact. The students are bringing their own music to the lessons, music styles that often connect to popular culture. An increased student influence is also constructed as something self-evidently good and is well in line with the idea of a more egalitarian relationship between teachers and students. Under those circumstances teachers find it more difficult to offer resistance and enforce their own ideas. The implication for the lesson content also seems to be rarely problematized and discussed among the teachers. Teachers are often well educated in the area of western classical music and find themselves playing hard rock and the latest hits with their influential students on traditional instruments used in western art music. But what possibilities are offered outside the field of popular music in late modernity? Are those tendencies just an inevitable development in our time or is it time to restore modern ideas in order to save valuable knowledge? Data consists of group conversations with teachers from six schools. All together 27 teachers in music (instrumental teaching), drama, media (photo and film), dance and art were participating. The theoretical and methodological approach is founded in social constructionism and post-structuralistic theory using the combination of discursive psychology and discourse theory. This two-sided approach is considered to be productive as it opens up for both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective.

De estetiska uttrycksformerna är relativt ovanliga när det handlar om att inkludera dem i undervisningen, exempelvis musik integrerat i svenskundervisningen. Musiken används mest i skolundervisning i form av sånger för att gynna elevernas kulturarv. Musikämnet har mer potential än så och kan användas på ett mer didaktiskt sätt, exempelvis genom att utveckla elevernas läs- och skrivutveckling i form av en varierad svenskundervisning. En sådan integrering av musik i svenskämnet blir dock enformigt ifall musik endast används i syfte att lära elever nya sånger. Eleverna ska ha en varierad skolgång samt en konstellation av musik och språk som lärande metoder i undervisningen. Det finns en del vetenskapliga arbeten om musik integrerat i undervisningen, dock behövs det ytterligare forskningen inom detta område. Därför vill vi bidra genom vår forskning för att visa vad musik har att tillföra i svenskundervisningen, specifikt inom läs- och skrivutveckling. Syftet för studien är att undersöka relationen mellan elevernas samarbete och deras textbearbetning utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv kombinerat med ett multimodalt perspektiv. Syftet mynnar ut i två frågeställningar: Vad resonerar eleverna om när de skriver en berättelse till en given melodi? På vilket sätt bidrar musiken till elevernas läs- och skrivutveckling när de skriver en berättelse till en given melodi? Studien besvarar frågorna genom en sammanställning och analys från empiri utifrån tre kännetecken ur det sociokulturella perspektivet kombinerat med det multimodala perspektivet, nämligen kreativitet, mediering och socialt samspel. Det övergripande resultatet, är att eleverna resonerar om vad de kan ta bort, byta plats eller lägga till ord från sina berättelser för att den ska förhålla sig bättre till melodin. Det andra övergripande resultatet är att musiken bidrar till elevernas läs- och skrivutveckling, eftersom musik kan stimulera deras medvetenhet om textens syfte, att skriva en berättelse till en given melodi. Musiken bidrar även till att eleverna bearbetar sina texter på en högre nivå, genom att läsa meningarna högt för att förhålla sig både till melodin och berättelsens struktur.

This thesis focuses on education at Swedish community music and arts schools and at primary schools. The aim of the study is to contribute to knowledge formation within the field of music education by examining how children make music in an institutional context and how the development of new approaches in teaching and learning affect how children practise music. This is studied by observing what happens when children aged 9 to 12, compose music when they have access to digital tools in a community music and arts school and in a primary school – with specific focus on how composing tasks take shape under varying contextual and interpersonal conditions. 13 children from a community music and arts school and 21 children from a primary school participated in the study. In order to gather material for this study a survey was undertaken to examine the children’s experiences of music, instruments and digital tools. In order to observe and examine composing activities and the music the children had composed, these sessions were recorded on video. The theoretical framework for the study is based on a sociocultural perspective. The results indicate contextual-related differences between the activities in the community music and arts school and the primary school. The differences are observed in the activities and the music the children compose. By addressing interpersonal-related differences the reason why some groups of children undertake the task of composing and some groups of children do not undertake this task can be examined further.

The way in which music teachers choose and use the subject content in ensemble and music theory in upper secondary school is focused in this study. The point of interest is the everyday classroom teaching of music teachers. The intentions that music teachers have with their teaching are also studied. This thesis is a study of music teaching and is a subject-didactic investigation, inspired by variation theory. The study is a contribution to empirical-oriented didactics since it generates knowledge of how the relation between content and teaching methods is constituted in music teaching. The overarching aim of the thesis is to study how music teachers in upper secondary school choose teaching content when teaching ensemble and music theory. The teachers´ use of teaching content implies that they choose to focus and teach certain parts in their teaching. This choice of content and how it is used is in focus in this study. The research questions are: How do music teachers choose teaching content when teaching ensemble and music theory in upper secondary school? How do music teachers use the teaching content in their teaching? The data collection includes video-documented lessons and qualitative interviews with five music teachers in upper secondary school. The selection of music teachers was made by strategic selection in order to obtain varied, substantial information of the ways music teachers handle the music content. The analysis reveals two different choices of content. When the teachers have music and theory as the content of their teaching, it is the content that guides the teaching methods, where the teacher uses a fixed content, which is presented in different ways; this was mainly in music theory. When the content is music activities, the music teacher adjusts the activity-based content in accordance with the pupils’ level of skills in ensemble. Music as a subject matter of facts describes the teaching that occurs. In teaching, verbal instructions are made explicit by practical instructions. The pupils´ forms of activity are principally reproductive and reflective. The holistic approach, which is prominent in the intentions music teachers have with their teaching, is not reflected in their actual teaching. Instead, they choose to focus a part of the text without paying attention to its relation to a broader musical context. The teaching corresponds to the curriculum with regard to teaching fundamental concepts, but does not relate to music-making. When teachers express musical intentions, these do not correspond to their teaching and vice versa. The variation theory analysis is a result of the researcher´s external perspective, where analytical tools have been used on the empirical material. The teachers have not been informed about the variation theory perspective. The music teachers choose a content to teach their pupils. By way of the learning objects, which might be constituted by actions as mentioned earlier, the teacher develops the pupils´ skills by focusing and varying the critical aspects of the content in question, which generates different patterns of variation. For example, in order to teach a chromatic scale, the teacher focuses on the pupils´ skills to define, recognise and write the scale. This implies more than one critical aspect in the teacher´s use of the teaching content. From an overall perspective, the critical aspects are characterized by motor skills and by following rules. The differences that occur in the variation results are closely related to the teaching content. In music theory, the most prominent pattern of variation is generalisation, which implies that a phenomenon is varied by focusing on different expressions of it. In ensemble, the patterns of variation are principally constituted by generalisation and separation. The teachers´ ways of handling the teaching content in ensemble also imply that they separate a part of this content and use it separated from the larger context in which it appears. Teaching addressed to one individual pupil is characterised by separation, whilst teaching addressed to a group of pupils relates to generalisation. Furthermore, the sequence of the patterns of variation seems to relate to different contents in different ways. The pattern of variation occurs in different orders of appearance depending on the content. The foundation for the two different choices of content that are made by the music teachers, as well as the significance of the learning objects, are finally discussed. Music and theory as content relate to anaesthetic foundation, while music as activity as the content implies a social foundation. These foundations of content are also related to theories of Bildung. A learning object signifies a certain way of apprehending the content. The occurrence of different patterns of variation has a significant relation to the teaching content. The music-oriented didactic and variation theory perspective in this study are related to one another by way of expressions of an emic and etic approach, respectively, where the music teachers´ focus on skills validates the two analyses of this study. Music as a subject matter of skills is discussed. Higher music education and the curriculum for ensemble and music theory in upper secondary school are also included in the discussion. Pedagogical implications of this study are that different content generates different ways of teaching, shown by the sequencing of the pattern of variation. The way music teachers handle the content differs when teaching is addressed to an individual pupil or a group of pupils. All four pattern of variation, separation, generalisation, contrast and fusion, occur in this study, though not in all learning objects. Thus, the character of the content seems to have an impact on the patterns of variation.