NMH - Brage (Norges musikkhøgskole)
Not a member yet
866 research outputs found
Sort by
Relational perspectives in the practices of choir directors
Get PDFABSTRACT. -
Mediating tools in the practices of choir directors -
Skills are relational, that is, they are developed in a relationship and interaction with the environment, and through the mediation that takes place in social processes. From a socio-cultural perspective this paper has its focus on the interaction in choir practice and the importance for the development of the individual, since it is in this interaction that learning, creativity and other cognitive skills are developed. This study of choir conductors applies a combination of methods, creating an opportunity for the participants to verbally express their thoughts, and also made it possible to examine silent dimensions of knowledge. It is practice-based, qualitative and longitudinal in character. Four choir directors were observed closely while working with their children and youth choirs and took part in semi-structured interviews. The empirical data material consists of observation notes, reflective writing, individual interviews, focus conversations, videotapes and stimulated recall interviews. With an overarching approach to learning and creativity as mediated and relational, the key concepts are tools, mediating tools, socially situated cultural practice and collective memory. In the case of professional choral directors, the relational aspect can be described as the ability to stand beside the recently performed actions, reflect on what has just happened and work on this experience over time. The Performing approaches and mediating tools become available in a social, situated and cultural practice. In conclusion, choral conducting involves a great variety of negotiations and renegotiations of working approaches and mediating tools, and the choir is a mediating tool for the choir director.
Keywords: choral conducting, choir director, mediating tools, relationalpublishedVersio
Hetero-observation in the orchestral conducting classroom from the students’ perspective: analysis of pre- and post-observational self-reports
Get PDFPaper from the conference "Becoming Musicians. Student involvement and teacher collaboration in higher music education" - Oslo, October 2018.Abstract -
This research explores the influence of hetero-observation on gestural learning by 28 first-year orchestral conducting students at a higher music education institution in Spain. For this hetero-observational study an exercise in two phases was designed in which each student conducted a different piece after one week of individual preparation. In the first phase each student conducted the work commissioned, and immediately after the execution they completed a self-report with open questions. After this a discussion/debate was held in which the external observers of the exercise (the peers and the teacher) analysed the performance on the podium and expressed opinions about it by exchanging suggestions and advice in order to improve it. In the second phase each student performed the same piece and, once more, received the hetero-observational feedback through an open debate, collecting new self-reports. Analyses of self-reports have shown that hetero-observation prevents unilateral transmission of knowledge and returns students to prominence in their training, favouring their active involvement in the process of individual and collective learning. From the results we can deduce that the students have felt a change of role in the classroom: they have started to act as teachers to their peers during the debates. This new role demands knowledge, contemplation of the observed, and a search for solutions to collaborate in the development of competencies of the others while looking back at themselves to visualise their own mistakes and successes in light of what was done by others on the podium. The results show that the hetero-observation is a tool for enhancing individual and collective gestural competencies, and the peer interaction during the debates has served to set in motion mechanisms of motivation and regulation of learning within the group of participants
Empowering girls as instrumentalists in popular music. Studying change through Engeström’s cultural-historical activity theory
Get PDFABSTRACT -
This article contributes new knowledge about the music educators’ role in informal learning settings, and potentials for empowering girls to transcend gender norms characteristic of popular music. Specifically, the article discusses change in the fields of music education and gender in light of Engeström’s cultural-historical activity theory and the concept of expansive learning. The discussion is based upon a study of girls ages 11 to 19 offered training to play in Norwegian popular music bands in an informal learning setting. The study identified conditions and elements that allowed change to take place by providing a potential for expansive learning and development. The authors seek to highlight and illustrate how Engeström’s theory can be used to analyze different actors in the field, the elements that shape their activity in the work of creating independent and competent female musicians and instrumentalists, and the actors’ motivation and learning processes that can be recognized through their mastering of tools. How the context, rules, and division of labor regulate and shape the activity and its goals and objects are important details.
Keywords: Informal learning; girls in popular music; music and gender; Engeström’s cultural-historical activity theory.publishedVersio
Interplaying Folk Songs: giving first year bachelor students the floor
Get PDFPaper from the conference "Becoming Musicians. Student involvement and teacher collaboration in higher music education" - Oslo, October 2018.Abstract -
How can we as teachers support our students in preparing for different practices in and with music? In this text we aim to explore this question by presenting and discussing the project Interplaying Folk Songs, taking place on the first-year bachelor programme at the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2018. The project is a part of a larger course module, and as teachers we wanted to explore methods for teaching together, inviting the students to share performative practices, knowledge and reflections. With activities ranging from traditional lectures to offering the floor to the first-year students, we aimed to create a process-oriented project with emphasis on discussion and musical interplay amongst the students, letting the voices of all students be heard. In addition, we wished to put ourselves in a situation where we got first-time experience, similar to the situation the students were exposed to. Interplaying Folk Songs takes Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs as a starting point. Through introductory lectures, group work, student presentations in plenary and discussions, we worked on songs from Berio’s collection. In this text we give examples from three of the student groups to illuminate experiences of cooperation, learning and teaching. The project has a pedagogical core reflecting on our practices and experiences as teachers
Forgetting the audible body. Voice awareness in teacher education
Get PDFABSTRACT. -
Voice training and voice knowledge have all but disappeared from Norwegian teacher education, in a general decline of the standing of practical-aesthetical subjects in compulsory school. Yet the voice is a teacher’s primary tool for establishing authority, commanding attention, and for guiding, motivating and building a trusting relationship with students. Voice trouble is a major cause of health problems and professional dysfunction in teachers. In this article, “the audible body” denotes both voice physiology and the relational meanings that color production and perception of a human voice, within a matrix of social and cultural connotations of beauty, quality, normalcy and health.
The study consists of interviews with six music student teachers having received voice lessons during their three-year bachelor program, concerning voice awareness and voice care during studies and as student teachers in practice periods. The students were able to identify the relational authority and attention-producing qualities inherent in a well-functioning voice, and had learned to prevent and remedy common voice problems. Findings from the interviews are contrasted with previous survey data from a student group exposed to a minimal amount of voice education.
The article discusses the importance of teachers’ awareness of physiological, relational and emotional influences on voice function, and of strategies for dealing with the challenges of being the audible center of pupils’ attention, where pupils become the teacher’s “magic mirror”. The disappearance of voice training from teacher education conveys ignorance of the bodily and relational foundations of human functioning, and may negatively affect teachers’ professional functioning.
Keywords: student teacher, the voice, the mirror-effect, self-censorship, voice shamepublishedVersio
Music and social transformation. Exploring ambiguous musical practice in a Palestinian refugee camp
Get PDFDissertation for the PhD degree Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo 2019 - Avhandling (Ph.D.) - Norges musikkhøgskole, 2019Abstract. - This research project addresses a central tension in the field of music education. While music making is often seen as contributing to the positive development of a sense of self through experiences of communality, belonging, and as a foundation for empowerment and agency, music educational practices have also been shown to reproduce wider societal structures of power and inequality. Activist strands of music education, such as the field of community music, have sought to challenge structures of inequality by emphasizing participatory, democratic,and open forms of music making available for all members of society. Yet, these efforts have been subjected to critique for being based on romanticized views of music as a means of social transformation and for disregarding how progressive musical practices also may be implicated in processes of social reproduction and exclusion.
The present study subjects this tension to closer scrutiny. Advancing the notion of ambiguous musical practice as an analytical lens highlighting the ambivalent processes that occur when music is employed as a means of social intervention, this research project offers insight into how participatory music making may function simultaneously as a transformative and reproductive force that enables individuals and groups to transcend certain boundaries within their social worlds; but, at the same time, reinforces and conceals other limitations that equally constrain them.
The research project is based on an ethnographic study of a community music program in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidieh in the southern part of Lebanon. Previous studies of the program have pointed to a range of positive outcomes for the participants, such as experiences of vitality and mastery, a positive sense of personal and cultural identity, and feelings of belonging and recognition. The present research builds upon these findings. Yet it also draws attention to a range of more ambiguous outcomes of music making in this context. In particular, the musical practice investigated here is connected to the constitution and imposition of a specific narrative of national belonging and identity, emphasizing a primordial and unceasing attachment to the land of Palestine, which may not fully resemble the lived experiences of all participants. A central objective of the study is to understand how the Palestinian music program offers music making as resource for agency and empowerment, while simultaneously constituting the participants as proper national subjects, thereby constraining the participants’ agency to align with specific socially recognized truths.
The empirical data was constructed using participant observation of music activities and performances and semistructured interviews with participants, teachers, and administrators from the music program, as well as local Palestinians from the community. The analysis has been conducted as an evolving process in which the empirical data has been continuously revisited, subjected to different modes of interpretation and explored through various theoretical perspectives. This process is documented in the four research articles that constitute the core of this study. Each of these papers engages with the empirical data and/or develops the analytical perspectives, without necessarily building upon each other in a linear fashion. The research synthesis presented here gathers these perspectives and provides a frame for the research as a whole.
Adopting a performative view of culture and identity, this study attends to processes of subject formation as an inherently ambiguous endeavor. Employing the thinking of Victor Turner, musical performance is cast as a liminal space in which ordinary social relations are temporarily suspended, and performers are afforded the means of assessing, exploring, and transforming their social realities. Applying Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and subjectivation
underlines how such performative processes are situated within the social, discursive, and institutional norms and structures that constitute the social world. These ideas are combined with a perspective from critical musicology and Georgina Born’s model of the social mediation of music, a model that conceives of musical sociality as occurring on four distinct planes or levels, each of which contributes to the constitution of a musical assemblage. By enabling explorations of how music constitutes the social on various planes of sociality, and the mutual interferences and intersections of these planes, Born’s model opens for examination the potential paradoxical and antagonistic outcomes of musical practice and performance.
The perspectives of Turner, Butler, and Born underlie the theoretical contribution of this study, which is the notion of ambiguous musical practice. As an analytical lens specifically suited for illuminating the ambivalent outcomes of participatory music making, this notion extends the dominant conceptions of music as a means of social transformation found within the field of music education. It does so by emphasizing three aspects of musical practice: its bidirectionality in terms of the interrelation of transformative/reproductive social processes involved in musicking; the multiplicity of meanings, referring to how music can mediate relations on various social planes simultaneously; and the in-betweenness that concerns how music making may enable performers to inhabit norms differently, but also how musical performance conceals and naturalizes those very norms. In this way, the notion of ambiguous musical practice may provide music educators with a deeper understanding of how music contributes to processes of social transformation, while retaining a critical attitude toward how music making may simultaneously be involved in more problematic processes of social reproduction.Sammendrag. - Dette forskningsprojekt tager udgangspunkt i en central spænding i musikpædagogisk tænkning. På den ene side fremhæves det ofte hvordan musikdeltagelse bidrager til en positiv udvikling af identitet og selvforståelse gennem oplevelser af fællesskab og samhørighed og som et fundament for deltagernes mulighed for at handle selvstændigt. Flere analyser har imidlertid også påpeget hvordan musikpædagogiske praksisser er med til at reproducere samfundsmæssige strukturer præget af ulighed. Aktivistiske strømninger i det musikpædagogiske felt, f.eks. community music-feltet, har forsøgt at udfordre sådanne ulige strukturer ved at promovere og igangsætte deltagerstyrede og åbne former for musikbeskæftigelse og ved at gøre disse tilgængelige for alle samfundsgrupper. Disse praksisser er imidlertid blevet kritiseret for at basere sig på romantiske forestillinger om musik som et middel til social forandring og for at overse hvordan også progressive musikalske praksisser potentielt er indflettet i socialt reproducerende og ekskluderende processer.
I det foreliggende studie undersøger jeg denne spænding i den musikpædagogiske tænkning nærmere. Gennem udviklingen af begrebet flertydig musikalsk praksis (ambiguous musical practice) fremhæver jeg de ambivalente situationer der opstår når musik bliver brugt som en form for social intervention. Derved skabes indsigt i den måde hvorpå aktiv musikdeltagelse potentielt fungerer som både en transformativ og en reproducerende kraft, der på den ene side gør individer og grupper i stand til at overskride barrierer i deres sociale virkelighed, men som samtidig forstærker og skjuler strukturer der fastholder dem i roller eller skaber nye begrænsninger.
Forskningsprojektet er baseret på en etnografisk undersøgelse af et community music-projekt i Rashidieh, en palæstinensisk flygtningelejr i den sydlige del af Libanon. Tidligere undersøgelser af dette musikprojekt har peget på en mængde gavnlige effekter for deltagerne, såsom oplevelser af vitalitet, mestring, en positiv erfaring af personlig og kulturel identitet, og oplevelser af anerkendelse og af at høre til. Det foreliggende studie bygger på de tidligere undersøgelsers resultater, men samtidig fremhæver jeg nogle mere ambivalente konsekvenser af musikdeltagelse i denne kontekst. Således viser jeg hvordan musikprojektet er forbundet til et bestemt nationalt narrativ der bygger på en forestilling om den nationale identitet og tilknytningen til Palæstina som uforanderlige og eviggyldige størrelser. Denne forestilling er imidlertid ikke nødvendigvis en præcis gengivelse af hvordan deltagerne i musikprojektet oplever deres egen livssituation. Et centralt mål for denne afhandling er at belyse hvordan musikdeltagelsen øger de unge palæstinenseres muligheder for handling og erfaring, men også hvordan musikprojektet samtidig konstituerer dem som nationale subjekter og på denne måde afpasser deltagernes erfaringsmuligheder med allerede fastsatte socialt accepterede sandheder. De empiriske data er produceret ved hjælp af deltagerobservation af aktiviteterne i musikprojektet og gennem semistrukturerede interviews med deltagere, undervisere og administrative medarbejdere knyttet til projektet samt andre personer fra det palæstinensiske samfund i Libanon. Disse data er analyseret i en fortløbende proces, hvor de kontinuerligt er blevet underkastet forskellige fortolkningsperspektiver og udforsket ved hjælp af forskellige teoretiske tilgange. Denne proces er dokumenteret i de fire forskningsartikler der udgør den centrale del af afhandlingen. Hver enkelt af disse artikler diskuterer elementer af det samlede studie uden nødvendigvis at bygge ovenpå hinanden i en lineær progression. Den foreliggende afhandlingstekst forbinder de forskellige perspektiver og danner en samlet ramme om forskningsprojektet. Projektet fokuserer på subjektivitetsdannelsen gennem et performativt blik på kultur og identitet med et særligt øje for det ambivalente og flertydige i disse processer. Med reference til antropologen Victor Turner beskrives musikalsk performance som et liminalt rum, hvor de almindelige og hverdagslige sociale relationer midlertidigt suspenderes, og hvor deltagerne får mulighed for at betragte, udforske og forandre de sociale realiteter de lever i. Ved at inddrage Judith Butlers begreber om performativitet og subjektivering understreges det hvordan sådanne performative processer er lokaliseret i de sociale, diskursive og institutionelle normer og strukturer der konstituerer den sociale virkelighed. Disse ideer og begreber kombineres med et perspektiv fra den kritiske musikvidenskab, nærmere bestemt Georgina Borns model for musik som en socialt medieret praksis. Denne model beskriver musikalsk socialitet som værende konstitueret på fire distinkte niveauer, der hver især bidrager til etableringen af en musikalsk montage (musical assemblage). Ved at give mulighed for at undersøge musikalsk socialitet på forskellige niveauer af den sociale virkelighed, og disse socialiteters gensidige interaktion, åbner denne model for forståelse af de paradoksale og modsætningsfyldte konsekvenser af musikalsk praksis.
Turners, Butlers og Borns perspektiver udgør fundamentet for mit teoretiske bidrag med denne afhandling, nemlig begrebet om flertydig musikalsk praksis (ambiguous musical practice). Dette begreb kan forstås som et særligt analytisk blik der er konstrueret for at belyse de ambivalente effekter af musikdeltagelse. Som sådan bidrager begrebet til at udvide de dominerende opfattelser af musik som et middel til social forandring der findes i det musikpædagogiske felt. Begrebet sætter fokus på tre aspekter af musikalsk praksis: dobbeltrettethed (bidirectionality), der skal forstås som den indbyrdes sammenhæng mellem forandrende og reproduktive sociale processer afstedkommet af musikdeltagelse; meningsmangfoldighed (multiplicity of meanings), der handler om hvordan musik medierer det sociale på forskellige niveauer på samme tid; og ’imellemhed’ (in-betweenness), som beskriver hvordan musikalsk performance potentielt tillader musikalske aktører at bebo sociale normer på alternative måder, men også hvordan musikalsk performance skjuler og naturaliserer sådanne normer. Begrebet om flertydig musikalsk praksis fremsættes som et analytisk redskab for musikpædagoger og –forskere der søger at forstå hvordan musik kan bruges til at skabe social forandring, men som samtidig ønsker at fastholde et kritisk blik på hvordan musikdeltagelse på problematiske måder også – og på samme tid – kan være involveret i socialt reproducerende processer.publishedVersio
GRUV : glede, rytme, uttvikling, vekst : en veileder til fri bevegelse til innspilt musikk for barn fra 10 måneder til to år og 11 måneder.
No full textBeveger barn i norske barnehager seg fritt til ferdiginnspilt musikk i dag? Er dette viktig? Hvordan kan vi legge til rette for dette? GRUV står for Glede, Rytme, Utvikling og Vekst, og denne veilederen gir deg enkle og kunnskapsbaserte råd om hvordan du kan skape GRUVEnde arenaer i barnehagen.
Forfatterne Rita Strand Frisk og Ane Linn Haagaas har bred erfaring med arbeid med musikk, barn og bevegelse. Frisk er førstelektor i musikkterapi ved Norges musikkhøgskole, Haagaas er kulturkonsulent i Røros kommune og sanger. Kommunen har samarbeidet med forfatterne om GRUV-prosjektet, som veilederen bygger videre på.publishedVersio
Valg av repertoar i sangundervisninga i videregående skole. Et bevisst eller bevisstløst valg ....
Get PDFNorges musikkhøgskole. Masteroppgave. MusikkpedagogikkSammendrag. -
Temaet for denne masteroppgava er valg av repertoar innenfor studieretning for Musikk, dans og drama, og det er videre tatt utgangspunkt i hovedinstrumentundervisninga i fagene Musikk, IKS1 og IKS2. Studiens hovedproblemstilling er Hva velger sanglærere på videregående skole som repertoar, og hva regulerer deres innholdsvalg. For å få svar på disse spørsmålene ble det tatt i bruk en spørreundersøkelse og kvalitative intervjuer. Undersøkelsene og analysen ble videre gjort med utgangspunkt i didaktisk teori med hovedvekt på danningsteori og innholdskategorien. Gjennom en analyse av de samlede resultatene ble det avdekket at det aktualiserte repertoaret i hovedinstrumentundervisninga i videregående skole viser stor grad av variasjon i sjanger. Denne variasjonen i sjangervalget er også gjelder for de fleste av de deltagende lærerne i studien. Videre viser studien at lærernes kompetanse og erfaring, elevens ønsker og motivasjon, ulike musikalske og sangtekniske faktorer ved repertoaret, og læreplanen som styringsdokument, på ulike måter er med på å regulere lærernes innholdsvalg.Summary. -
The topic of this master thesis is vocal teachers’ choice of repertoire within the principal instrument subject in upper secondary school («musikklinje»). The main research questions in this study are: What do vocal teachers in upper secondary school choose as repertoire, and what regulate their content selection? In order to answer these questions, a survey and qualitative interviews were carried out. Furthermore, the data collection and analysis were done applying theory on education with a particular emphasize on theories of Bildung and subject content theory. The analysis of the collected data showed that the actualized repertoire of the teaching of the principal instruments in upper secondary school is varied in regard to musical genre. Moreover, the study showed that the teachers’ competence and experience, the students’ wishes and motivation, various musical and vocal technical factors characterizing the repertoire, and the curriculum («læreplanen») as a steering document, in different ways are involved in regulating the teachers’ choice of content
Academic musicians. How music performance students in Sweden re-/negotiate notions of knowledge and competence
Get PDFABSTRACT -
As a result of reforms across higher education in Sweden, music performance programs have been subject to processes of academization. As professional education programs are located within academic structures, the question of balance between practical and ‘scientific’ knowledge is crucial. Expected learning outcomes at a national level now include statements concerning students’ insight into current research, critical reflection, an ability to formulate new questions and to contribute to the development of subject-specific knowledge. Students find themselves caught in the midst of these changes, where tensions rise between craftsmanship, artistic performance skills and scholarly knowledge. The aim of this study is to investigate how music performance students re-/negotiate notions of knowledge and competence in the light of processes of academization. By using methods associated with critical discourse studies, the specific objective here is to analyse and explain how tensions are discursively manifested as students re-/negotiate notions of knowledge and competence. The result is based on interviews with six master students with a classical music study-orientation at three higher music education institutions in Sweden. Results show that tensions arise primarily from ideas of musical autonomy versus adaption, between what the education provides versus what the labour market demands and between musical craftsmanship versus scholarly tasks. It is argued that ideals within higher education, in general, versus values and traditions associated with a master-apprentice tradition is one source of such tensions, which risk creating a perception of a fragmented education.
Keywords: music performance students, critical discourse studies, academization, higher education, knowledge and competencepublishedVersio
Høydeskrekk i rytmisk sangundervisning. En kvalitativ intervjuundersøkelse av hvordan sanglærere kan legge til rette for at elever utvikler mestringsforventninger knyttet til range med særlig fokus på høyde
Get PDFNorges musikkhøgskole. Masteroppgave. MusikkpedagogikkSammendrag. -
Denne oppgavens problemstilling er ”Hvordan kan sanglærere innen rytmisk musikk legge til rette for at elever utvikler mestringsforventninger knyttet til range med særlig fokus på høyde?”. Jeg har brukt det semistrukturerte kvalitative intervjuet som primærmetode, og observasjon som supplerende metode. Utvalget av informanter består av 11 rytmisk utdannede sanglærere. Oppgavens teorigrunnlag består av blant annet Banduras (1997) teori om forventninger om mestring (self-efficacy) og Dwecks (2016) teori om mindsets. Sanglærernes svar diskuteres i lys av oppgavens teorigrunnlag. Viktige funn er at et godt tillitsforhold mellom lærer og elev må ligge til grunn for at eleven skal kunne utvikle sin range. Sanglærerne har erfart at dersom eleven opplever utfordringer knyttet til range, kan dette ha konsekvenser for hvilket repertoar eleven kan synge. Sanglærerne ser det som viktig at elevene erfarer mestring med range, noe lærerne kan legge til rette for ved å ta bevisste valg når det kommer til repertoar og tonearter. Resultatene viser også at uformelle læringsformer som improvisasjon og herming kan legge godt til rette for mestring av range.Abstract. -
The reasearch question of this master’s thesis is "How can vocal teachers in rhythmic music facilitate the development of students’ self-efficacy in relation to range with extra focus on high pitches?". The primary research method used is the semi-structured qualitative interview, with observation as a supplementary method. The selection of informants consists of 11 vocal teachers with rhythmic educational backrgound. The theory base consists of, among other things, Bandura's (1997) theory of self-efficacy and Dweck's (2016) theory of mindset. The teachers' responses are discussed in light of the thesis's theoretical basis. Some of the findings address that a good relationship of trust between the teacher and the student must be established as the basis for the students development of range. The vocal teachers have experienced that if a student struggle with challenges related to range, then these challenges may have further consequences for which repertoire the student is able to sing. The vocal teachers consider it important that the students experience mastery with range, which the teachers can facilitate by making conscious choices when it comes to repertoire and choice of key. The results also show that informal learning practices, such as improvisation, can facilitate mastery experiences with range