Okategoriserade Introduction The national and gendered meanings of higher classical music education

Countries in the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe have been called home by some of the great composers of music history, and the region hosts some of the world’s most prestigious higher classical music education institutions. Despite this fact, Liisamaija Hautsalo states in her essay, the last of this section, that the Finnish-born composer Kaija Saariaho was perceived as being from “a faraway periphery” when she moved in the classical music circles of France, Germany and the US. In a scholarly context I was recently told that (post-communist) Central and Eastern European institutions are not representative of European higher classical music education. The person making this statement obviously assumed that European higher classical music education happens in the UK, or maybe in Germany and Austria. While I did not agree, this feedback speaks volumes about how classical music and higher classical music education is constructed as belonging to Western Europe in international academic debate today. In this special section the authors wish to problematize the role of nation and gender in higher classical music education, and the classical music contexts this education operates in, by focusing on the Baltic and Central and Eastern European region. By doing so we put the assumed Western European identity of classical music and higher classical music education in question.

Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2024:3 pages 45-48
Published on balticworlds.com on September 18, 2024

Countries in the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe have been called home by some of the great composers of music history, and the region hosts some of the world’s most prestigious higher classical music education institutions. Despite this fact, Liisamaija Hautsalo states in her essay, the last of this section, that the Finnish-born composer Kaija Saariaho was perceived as being from “a faraway periphery” when she moved in the classical music circles of France, Germany and the US. In a scholarly context I was recently told that (post-communist) Central and Eastern European institutions are not representative of European higher classical music education. The person making this statement obviously assumed that European higher classical music education happens in the UK, or maybe in Germany and Austria. While I did not agree, this feedback speaks volumes about how classical music and higher classical music education is constructed as belonging to Western Europe in international academic debate today. In this special section the authors wish to problematize the role of nation and gender in higher classical music education, and the classical music contexts this education operates in, by focusing on the Baltic and Central and Eastern European region. By doing so we put the assumed Western European identity of classical music and higher classical music education in question.

Classical music and higher music education

When you think of higher music education, young people with instrument cases might come to mind, on their way to practice in rooms at their institutions. Even though higher music education includes many different programs, and also genres like pop and folk music, and educates professionals in music technology or music management, for example, the classical music performance programs are the flagships of higher music education. In those programs the students learn to master an instrument in the tradition of Western Art Music. As such the classical music programs of higher music education also mirror a larger culture of classical music related practices that spreads across institutions such as orchestras, opera houses, agent offices, record labels, festivals and competitions. The classical music education programs of higher music education often collaborate with orchestras, are taught by musicians that have agents, and perform their examination concerts in concert halls.

In public discourse classical music may often be understood as a series of aesthetic objects, rooted in history, but researchers from musicology and music education alike have argued that classical music is a cultural and social practice. Classical music can therefore not be separated from the values and politics coloring contemporary society. Ideas and materialities of classical music are formed in the educational programs that all future musicians participate in. In the Baltic and Central and Eastern European region prestigious institutions for higher classical music education include those, to mention just a few, founded by Franz Liszt or named after Fredric Chopin and Jean Sibelius. Institutions where contemporary well-known composers like Kaija Saariaho and Arvo Pärt were educated are also located there. Some of those institutions, composers and the history of the figures of music are discussed and analyzed in this special section.

Nation and gender

Classical music and classical music education have been strongly connected to nationhood, especially in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, and to (masculinized) genius cultures of the arts. For example, national composers and national anthems figure frequently in music education. Nationalism has also affected music cultural formations in Europe’s history, especially in the late 19th century. This was also the period when many higher music education institutions were founded. Ideas about national and gendered norms further color higher music education in educational institutions and in their practices of teaching. The gendered norms of the classical music canon and its rearticulation of masculinity as genius have been found to be taken for granted in classical music culture. Gendered norms are operational in, for example, expectations around roles and instrument choices in higher music education. Students in higher classical music education learn to uphold (and sometimes reshape) the national and gendered heritages of classical music. Some of the present ideals around sounds, performances and cultural codes are regional, others are nation-specific, while some are trans-European, or even global ideals in classical music. These practices of articulating classical music in higher classical music education as national or international, and gendered, can be seen in spoken or unspoken rules around repertoire, dress code or musical styles: Or for that matter in how the students’ examination concerts are assessed by their professors, as analyzed by Cecilia Ferm Almqvist and Kristi Kiilu in one of the articles of this special section. Still, the specific meanings of nation and gender in classical music and higher classical music education put in the context of post-empire Europe has rarely been studied. In this special section the authors aim to advance such analysis.

This special section cannot cover all aspects of nation and gender in the higher classical music education, and classical music contexts, of the Baltic, Central and Eastern European region. Rather, it highlights some relevant examples and practices. One theme focuses on institutions, their history and processes of change in relation to international political processes. Here higher music education is rendered national and international in policy work and collaborations with institutions in other countries. Another theme is teaching practices and ideals. They can be expressed in assessment of a student that is performing a piece, or a whole concert, in front of an assessment committee. In the decisions about what is a good examination concert repertoire (what should be played), style (how should it be played) and the performance (how/who is playing on stage) all contribute. The way that higher music education assesses students also include accepting them in the first place, and in the special section the practices of who is included are also discussed. Further, important figures of both music history and contemporary classical music are represented and discussed in this section.

Contributions

In this special section all contributions investigate practices of classical music and higher classical music education, in terms of how nation and/or gender come to matter there. Regions and countries discussed or researched are Ingria (now Russia), Georgia, Hungary, Estonia, and Finland, painting a varied picture of the Baltic, Central and Eastern European region. Studies of contemporary higher classical music education practices, and its links to political tensions in Europe, as well as its historical roots are included. Music history and its national and gendered meanings are complemented with in-depth discussions of a central composer of our time.
In the peer reviewed article “National identity, music education, and gender at the Kolppana Seminary in Ingria, 1863—1919”, Samuli Korkalainen studies the history of a Finnish educational institution in Ingria (present-day Russia) and how nationalism took shape there. Music at the Kolppana Seminary was a central tool for constructing ideas about Finnishness and identity in the male dominated educational institution that used the Finnish language. Korkalainen concludes that Ingrian Finns at Kolppana aimed to preserve their native language, Lutheran religion, and national customs, but also constructed a regional identity, “Ingrianism”, before being expelled to Helsinki after WW1.

In the second peer reviewed article, “Music conservatory assessment approaches. Distribution and negotiation of values”, Cecilia Ferm Almqvist and Kristi Kiilu analyze assessment of examination concerts in higher classical music education in Estonia, Finland and Hungary. They discuss how different practices of assessing learning affect what students learn, how they feel and how they perceive the value of their education towards becoming musicians. The result of the analysis shows three different assessment approaches: the competition, the portfolio and the response approach. They were all colored by a foundational value of freedom of artistic and aesthetic expression, and influenced by the students’ ability to cope with the pressure; this was particularly true for the competition approach. In the article the authors conclude that awareness of how assessment practices can be performed and how they convey values about teaching, learning and music is central for higher music education.

In the third peer reviewed article of the special section, “Georgia at the crossroads. Perspectives on the Europeanization of higher music education”, Iveri Kekenadze Gustafsson and Nana Sharikadze investigate the global, national and local processes of Europeanization in Georgian higher music education. Their object of study is the Tbilisi State Conservatoire and its journey to closer collaboration with EU schemes like Erasmus+, and harmonization with European higher education ideals and values. The authors identify challenges to the process of change in Georgian higher music education. These include the low interest for arts education on the EU level, the present political climate in Georgia, and locally, an unhealthy working culture and a slow speed of change in the organizational mindset.
In the special section commentary, “Nation, gender, and music history”, Gergely Fazekas discusses and explicates how national ideals have colored music history. He does so by using examples of Hungarian composers and their diverse backgrounds to illustrate the multifaceted constructions of what may seem like simple national, or nationalist, figures. One of his examples is György Ligeti, a Hungarian speaking composer born in Romania who defined himself as a Jew and spent most of his career in Austria. Fazekas puts in question the simplistic versions of how a composer becomes national. Further, he discusses gender in music history, drawing on figures like Fanny Mendelssohn, deconstructing the stories we tell about European classical music.

The final others texts of the special section are a brief interview with Olli-Pekka Martikainen, former vice dean of the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, conducted by Ann Werner, and an essay about composer Kaija Saariaho by Liisamaija Hautsalo. The interview addresses nation and gender in higher music education from a leadership perspective. In the essay “Finnish, French, or cosmopolitan? Kaija Saariaho broke many glass ceilings during her long career as a composing woman”, Liisamaija Hautsalo honors the great Finnish composer Saariaho by following her career achievements and discussing the gendered imbalances of the classical music world. Using Saariaho’s education and career path as narrative the author forefronts both the unique musical styles of the composer, especially in her operas, and how her career was shaped by her Finnishness, gender and motherhood during different periods of her life. Hautsalo concludes that women who want to become classical music professionals still have countless battles ahead of them. ≈

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank all of the authors for their hard work with the texts for the special section. I would also like to thank the four researchers in the project Conservatory cultures (lead by me and funded by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies 2021–2023), Gergely Fazekas, Cecilia Ferm Almqvist, Kristi Kiilu and Tuire Kuusi for advice and support during the project period and for their help with making this special section happen.

References

1. Anna Bull, Class control and classical music, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); Christopher Small, Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998).
2. David G. Hebert & Alexandra Kertz-Welzel, ed., Patriotism and nationalism in music education, (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012).
3. Michael Murphy & Harry White, eds., Musical constructions of nationalism: essays on the history and ideology of European musical culture, 1800—1945 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001).
4. Alexis Anja Kallio et al, ed., The Politics of Diversity in Music Education, (Springer International Publishing, 2021).
5. Christine Battersby, Gender and genius: towards a feminist aesthetics, (London: Women’s Press, 1989); Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the musical canon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
6. Susan Hallam, Lynne Rogers, & Andrea Creech, Gender differences in musical instrument choice. International Journal of Music Education, vol. 26 no. 1 (2008): 7—19.

Ann Werner