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Copyright

Stefan Östersjö and Carl Holmgren with Åsa Unander-Scharin

Published On

2024-05-27

Page Range

pp. 13–46

Language

  • English

Print Length

34 pages

1. A Swedish Perspective on Artistic Research Practices in First and Second Cycle Education in Music

Chapter of: Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education: Exploring the Potential of Artistic Research(pp. 13–46)
This chapter seeks an understanding of in what ways practices of artistic research are contributing to developing the teaching and learning of music performance in Higher Music Education (HME). It is built on two of the authors’ long-term experience of teaching artistic research methods and supervising theses in first and second cycle programs in Sweden. The chapter consists of three main parts. First, we provide a brief historical overview of how artistic research in music was implemented in Sweden, with particular attention to knowledge claims and method development. Second, we consider the impact of the Bologna process on HME in Sweden, a process in which the authors have been personally involved. It has, among other things, demanded a shift from teacher-driven provision toward student-centred higher education. The third part presents an overarching qualitative and quantitative analysis of completed bachelor and master theses from 2020–2022 within the bachelor and master programs in music performance in the Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology with regard to aims, research questions and methods. For each of the six identified categories, one thesis was selected for a more detailed qualitative analysis, after which the authors were interviewed. The study proposes three main implications for HME: artistic research has shown potential to enable more student-centred forms of teaching and learning, based to a great extent on its use of reflexive methods; the use of reflexive methods shows great potential to enhance life-long learning; and finally that the role of artistic experimentation, as expressed in the student theses, suggests that the notion of the artistic research laboratory may be a potential model for how the offerings of HME to teaching and learning may be reconsidered.

Contributors

Stefan Östersjö

(author)
Chaired Professor of Musical Performance at Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4704-5420

Stefan Östersjö is Chaired Professor of Musical Performance at Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology. He received his doctorate in 2008 for a dissertation on musical interpretation and contemporary performance practice. In 2009, he became a research fellow at the Orpheus Institute. He is currently also a guest professor at Ingesund School of Music, Karlstad University of Technology, Professor II at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, and associate professor at DXARTS, University of Washington. Östersjö is a leading classical guitarist specialising in the performance of contemporary music. As a soloist, chamber musician, sound artist, and improviser, he has released more than twenty CDs and toured Europe, the USA, and Asia. He has collaborated extensively with composers and in the creation of works involving choreography, film, video, performance art, and music theatre. Between 1995 and 2012 he was the artistic director of Ensemble Ars Nova, a leading Swedish ensemble for contemporary music. As a soloist he has worked with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, Péter Eötvös, Pierre-André Valade, Mario Venzago, and Andrew Manze.

Carl Holmgren

(author)
Professor in Music Education at the Department of Creative Studies at Umeå University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8514-5422

Carl Holmgren is an Associate Professor in Music Education at the Department of Creative Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. He holds a PhD in Music Education, and a master’s in Music and Education in Music from the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. Besides being a skilled piano teacher, Holmgren has extensive experience of playing for ballet classes. He has published in international and Swedish journals and presented at Swedish, Nordic, and international conferences. Holmgren’s research, using hermeneutics, poetry, and translation, focuses on the teaching and learning elements of musical interpretation of Western classical music in higher education.

Åsa Unander-Scharin

(author)
Professor of Music Performance at Luleå University of Technology

Åsa Unander-Scharin is a professor of music performance at Luleå university of technology, and an artist-researcher in the intersection of opera, dance, music, interactive technology and robotics. Her internationally acclaimed artistic work started in 1998 when she created the first choreography for an industrial robot, The Lamentations of Orpheus, that was awarded an honorary mention from VIDA 2.0, and in 2010 her emotionally captivating robotic swan Robocygne created a newsworthy item that reached as far as the USA, India, Canada and Singapore. She has choreographed and directed two dance films for the Swedish television, interactive and robotic installations, and about 40 dance and opera performances at Swedish Radio/ Berwald Hall, Stockholm Royal Opera, The Dance Museum, Vadstena Academy, Operadagen Rotterdam, Deutche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, Cape Town Opera, The Liszt Academy in Budapest, and Computer-Human-Interaction conferences in Toronto, Paris and San José. Recent works include two experimental operas Callas:Medea for the Croatian National Opera and The Tale of the Great Computing Machine commissioned by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Suite Processionis, and a new creation for double choir, dancer and hyperorgan in September 2023.