In the current debate concerning the Swedish Schools of Music and Performing Arts (SMPAs) the concept of flexibility is frequently used. Here it mostly describes the necessity to take students’ requests and needs into account in teacher education and the institutions’ ability to adapt to changing demands for artistic activities among children and adolescents. In contrast to this view, this study examines flexibility as a central competency of the teaching profession and particularly in a curriculum-free environment such as the SMPAs. Resting on the assumption that teachers with a large toolkit have a certain advantage in practising flexibility, the study is based on interviews with three multi-instrumentalists, all of them experienced music teachers in SMPAs. The analysis suggests three forms of flexibility that are related to the teachers’ use of instrumental tools, each of them emerging in particular kinds of teaching activities: problem-solving flexibility in instrument-related counseling, method flexibility in ensemble leadership, and role flexibility in group music-making. The findings are discussed in relation to ideals of teacher specialization and versatility, and the notion of tool-based flexibility is distinguished from improvisation as a teaching skill.

Drawing on philosopher Richard Sennett’s view of craftsmanship, this chapter argues that music education should address human incompleteness and ambiguity—as especially evident in contexts involving vulnerability. Music has often been seen as an indicator, but also as a means of overcoming unwanted psychological or social vulnerabilities. From another point of view, vulnerability may also be understood as a desired quality of openness needed for creativity and education—a quality that nevertheless requires appropriate safety mechanisms. These facets of vulnerability are illustrated through the schoolwork of the Swedish-German Duo Gelland, one of world’s foremost classical violin duos. Using brief contemporary compositions, the Gellands elicit children’s associative imagery, incorporating it in subsequent interpretations of the music in which the children may take part as conductors or musicians. Through interviews and observations from school workshops in Germany, it is shown how the Gellands create musical contexts in which children’s vulnerabilities can be safely exposed and transformed. At the same time, the musicians see children’s engagement as proving the social value of the music. In providing a neutralising arena for children’s sometimes frightening and violent realities, the Gellands demonstrate a model for “health musicianship”, challenging sharp distinctions between artistic, pedagogical and therapeutic realms.

In order to promote children’s collaborative musical creativity in new digital environments, we need a better understanding not only of the sound production capabilities provided by the new digital tools, but also of the interaction affordances involved. This study focuses on the interactional patterns emerging in children’s musical creativity, comparing creative group processes on iPad tablet computers (with GarageBand software) to processes on traditional musical instruments. Both instrumentations were assigned to five groups of four 10–12-year-olds for creating sound landscapes for a “space” movie. The traditional instrument groups’ processes were characterized by peer teaching as well as multimodal, improvisatory negotiations with rapid exchanges between the participants, both kinds of processes involving the intertwining of deictic expressions with hands-on musical demonstrations, and clear signs of group flow. By contrast, the tablet groups relied on solitary, parallel planning processes where possible coordinations between the participants took on a more abstract, conceptual form, at a remove from the actual musical ideas and their interplay. Also, there were far fewer signs of group flow than in the traditional instrument groups. In sum, the tablets did not seem to match traditional musical instruments in terms of their interactional and creative affordances. This may be because the traditional instruments offer richer textures of gestural and tactile qualities, visual cues, and spatial anchoring points for facilitating concrete musical interaction, and because the GarageBand software actually requires some reliance on abstract conceptual labels, channelling the participants’ attention toward pre-planning rather than hands-on musical play. The results are problematized with a view to our decision to treat the tablet computer as akin to a musical instrument rather than as an action environment of its own.

In his book Music, Ideas, History: Texts 1990–2022 (in Finnish: Musiikki, aatteet, historia: Tekstejä 1990–2022), Matti Huttunen sheds light on the world of Western art music by showing how past historiographies of music have given it form and meaning. While grounded in Dahlhaus’ principles of structural history, Huttunen also challenges such models by allowing greater interpretive multidimensionality. He believes that by studying past writings about music, we can learn about music and ourselves, but his research also reflects a Nietzschean distance to one’s own time. In future accounts of Finnish musicology, Huttunen’s writings may provide a focus for a "long 20th century" of musical historiography.

Most research on people's conceptions regarding creativity has concerned informal beliefs instead of more complex belief systems represented in scholarly theories of creativity. The relevance of general theories of creativity to the creative domain of music may also be unclear because of the mixed responses these theories have received from music researchers. The aim of the present study was to gain a better comparative understanding of theories of creativity as accounts of musical creativity by allowing students to assess them from a musical perspective. In the study, higher-education music students rated 10 well-known theories of creativity as accounts of four musical target activities—composition, improvisation, performance, and ideation—and argued for the “best theoretical perspectives” in written essays. The results showed that students' theory appraisals were significantly affected by the target activities, but also by the participants' prior musical experiences. Students' argumentative strategies also differed between theories, especially regarding justifications by personal experiences and values. Moreover, theories were most typically problematized when discussing improvisation. The students most often chose to defend the Four-Stage Model, Divergent Thinking, and Systems Theory, while theories emphasizing strategic choices or Darwinian selection mechanisms were rarely found appealing. Overall, students tended toward moderate theory eclecticism, and their theory appraisals were seen to be pragmatic and example-based, instead of aiming for such virtues as broad scope or consistency. The theories were often used as definitions for identifying some phenomena of interest rather than for making stronger explanatory claims about such phenomena. Students' theory appraisals point to some challenges for creativity research, especially regarding the problems of accounting for improvisation, and concerning the significance of theories that find no support in these musically well-informed adults' reasoning.

Multi-instrumental musicianship appears in various musical traditions, also frequently figuring in systems of music teacher education. Multi-instrumentalism covers forms of musical creativity and versatile professionalism that differ from ideologies of specialization often emphasized in instrumental music education. Thus, it is relevant to ask whether and how multi-instrumentalism might also shape music teacher identities. This question was explored through a case study of three experienced multi- instrumental teachers in the Swedish system of Schools of Music and Performing Arts – exemplifying a context in which teachers have large freedom to shape their work. Teacher narratives were analyzed with reference to the binary oppositions between versatility versus specialization and musician versus teacher. The results show that multi-instrumentalist teachers may not only occupy subject positions as versatile all-round musicians, but that they may also carve their identities as specialized performers, or adopt teacher-focused identities such as gamemaster, coach, or counselor. Furthermore, for some teachers, the shifts between instruments may themselves involve shifts between such subject positions. Based on our findings, multi-instrumentalism appears as a potent teacher resource within educational systems which are extensively driven by students’ needs and interests.

Studies in musical improvisation show that musicians and even children are able to communicate intended emotions to listeners at will. To understand emotional expressivity in music as an art form, communicative success needs to be related to improvisers’ thought processes and listeners’ aesthetic judgments. In the present study, we used retrospective verbal protocols to address college music students’ strategies in improvisations based on emotion terms. We also subjected their improvisations to expert ratings in terms of heard emotional content and aesthetic value. A qualitative analysis showed that improvisers used both generative strategies (expressible in intramusical terms) and imaginative, extramusical strategies when approaching the improvisation tasks. The clarity of emotional communication was found to be high overall, and linear mixed-effects models showed that it was supported by generative approaches. However, perceived aesthetic value was unrelated to such emotional clarity. Instead, aesthetic value was associated with emotional complexity, here defined as the heard presence of “nonintended” emotions. The results point toward a view according to which the expressive content of improvisation gets specified and personalized during the very act of improvisation itself. Arguably, musical expressivity in improvisation should not be equated with the error-free communication of previously intended emotional categories.

This study concerns classical musicians’ ability to recognize style periods from very brief visual exposure to musical notation. 25 professional pianists were shown nine 500-ms displays of musical excerpts from piano works by J. S. Bach, L. v. Beethoven, and F. Chopin. The pianists were told to describe what they saw and to assess the style period of the music. Recognition was relatively good: 49% of the verbal protocols included a correct style period label or the right composer name. Verbal protocols also supported the notion that style recognition chiefly relies on intuitive, holistic integration of information, rather than on reflective, analytic processing. First, correct responses regarding style period occurred significantly earlier than incorrect ones, which suggests that they may have taken place more intuitively. Second, correct recognitions were not preceded by richer spoken contents than was found in the case of non-recognition. Indeed, the opposite was the case for composer recognition, which again associates recognition with intuitive processing. It is argued that the rapid recognition of musical style characteristics is a prerequisite for stylistically sensitive sight reading.

In comparison with instrumental sight reading of musical notation, sight singing is typically characterized by the presence of lyrics. The purpose of this study was to explore how skilled sight singers divide their visual attention between written music and lyrics and how their eye-movement behavior is influenced by musical stimulus complexity. Fourteen competent musicians performed 10 newly composed songs in a restricted temporal condition (60 bpm). Eye movements and vocal performances were recorded and complemented with posttask complexity ratings and interviews. In the interviews, the singers emphasized the priority of focusing on the melody instead of the lyrics. Accordingly, eye-movement analyses indicated not only more total fixation time on music than lyrics but also longer fixation durations, longer durations of visits (i.e., sequences of fixations), and a larger number of fixations per visit on music than on lyrics. The singers also more typically arrived at a bar by glancing first at the music instead of lyrics. Generalized linear mixed-model analyses showed that the number of notes and accidentals in a bar influenced the fixation time and that pupil dilation was increased by a larger number of accidentals. Measurements of eye–voice span, that is, the temporal distance between fixating and singing a note, were best predicted by phrase structure and the note density of previous melodic material. According to the interviews, the best sight singers’ approaches were characterized by a flexibility of moving between different sight-singing strategies. The study offers a comprehensive overview regarding the bottom-up and top-down aspects affecting sight-singing performance.

This article introduces the notion of pleasant musical imagery (PMI) for denoting everyday phenomena where people want to cherish music ‘‘in their heads.’’ This account differs from current para- digms for studying musical imagery in that it is not based a priori on (in)voluntariness of the experience. An empirical investigation of the structure and experi- ential content in 50 persons’ experiences of PMI applied the elicitation interview method. Peer judgments of the interviews helped to bridge a phenomenological inves- tigation of particular experiences with systematic between-subjects analysis. Both structural features of the imagery (e.g., Looseness of structure or Looping) and content features of the imagery (e.g., Embodied evoca- tiveness and Object-directedness) showed significant associations with participants’ individual characteris- tics, personality, and/or cognitive style. The approach taken suggests a new paradigm for studying musical imagery—one that is based on tracing the interactional and enactive processes of ‘‘inner listening.’’

Challenges of intonation derive from discrepancies between justly tuned intervals. In theoretical literature, string intonation is depicted as a balancing act between melodic and harmonic ideals, or between distinct tuning systems. However, practical string teachers’ and empirical researchers’ accounts sometimes appear to bypass such theory, focusing instead more informally on listening, kinesthetics, or tools and practice routines. In this survey study, our aim was to see how working string instructors approach questions of intonation, both as teachers and as musicians. A qualitative analysis of 95 Swedish professional string teachers’ responses reveals a rather intuitive approach to the topic, without any traces of intonation theory as such. The participants reported using a rich variety of teaching strategies, but teaching intonation was typically framed simply as helping the student find the right pitch categories. Regarding their own intonation as musicians, the emerging view was that finer pitch adjustments might succeed just by good posture, slow practice, and listening in ensemble contexts. Overcoming the constraints of this practice-based tradition remains an important challenge for string pedagogy in higher music education. 

A music reader has to “look ahead” from the notes currently being played—this has usually been called the Eye-Hand Span. Given the restrictions on processing time due to tempo and meter, the Early Attraction Hypothesis suggests that sight readers are likely to locally in- crease the span of looking ahead in the face of complex upcoming symbols (or symbol re- lationships). We argue that such stimulus-driven effects on looking ahead are best studied using a measure of Eye-Time Span (ETS) which redefines looking ahead as the metrical distance between the position of a fixation in the score and another position that corresponds to the point of metrical time at fixation onset. In two experiments of temporally controlled sight reading, musicians read simple stepwise melodies that were interspersed with larger intervallic skips, supposed to create points of higher melodic complexity (and visual sali- ence) at the notes following the skips. The results support both Early Attraction (lengthening of looking ahead) and Distant Attraction (lengthening of incoming saccades) in the face of relative melodic complexity. Notably, such effects also occurred on the notes preceding the nominally complex ones. The results suggest that saccadic control in music reading depends on temporal restrictions as well as on local variations in stimulus complexity.

Musicians use silent music reading for memorizing, and this includes different types of mental imagery and analytical functions. The aim of this mixed-methods study was to address the effects of musical expertise, general level cognitive traits, and situational strategies on pianists’ performances after silent memorizing of notated music. We also compared pianists’ silent memorizing strategies between tonal and nontonal music. Thirty pianists performed short musical excerpts from memory after silently reading the notation for 1 minute. Following this, they described their memorizing strategies in an interview, and completed tests of cognitive style, aural skills, working memory, and music-processing style. The performances were assessed in terms of “recall rate” separately for both hands (accuracy of memorization) and “overall impression” (pianistic fluency and style). In tonal music, pianists’ aural imagery focused on imagining the melody, whereas in nontonal music, aural imagery typically focused on rhythmic aspects. In tonal music, conceptual strategies were related to traditional music analysis, whereas in nontonal music they were more piecemeal and atomistic in nature. According to linear mixed-effect models, right-hand recall rate was associated with higher aural skills, but left-hand recall rate was related to verbal cognitive style and analytical music-processing style, that is, more frequent use of music analysis in regular practice. Better performances in terms of overall impression were related to higher aural skills. Music education develops skills and strategies that are effective for memorizing, and beyond one’s working memory capacity. However, cognitive styles may also play a role in musicians’ silent memorizing.

Musicians often use mental practice for enhancing performance, but individuals may have different preferences and skills in their characteristic, individually successful ways of carrying out such practice. In this study, we focus on the approaches to mental practice of four pianists who, according to the ratings of a panel of expert judges, showed outstanding improvement in their performances following their mental practice of a new piece in at least one of the two conditions: silent reading of the score or reading the score while simultaneously listening to the music. The four pianists’ approaches to mentalpractice were studied through self-reports in post-task interviews that were compared with eye-tracking data gathered during the actual mental practice. In successful mental practice, the pianists relied on their experience and the skills they had practised in audiation, use of recordings, imaginary rehearsal, and structural analysis. The results encourage musicians to explore their characteristic approaches to mental practice, and to deliberately practise and develop versatile mental practice skills in order to apply them flexibly in different musical situations. Eye tracking was found to be a useful tool for validating and supplementing musicians’ subjective self-descriptions and for revealing covert mental processes in the context of music reading.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how professional pianists practice music for a concert, and whether their individual cognitive orientations in such practice processes can be identified accurately from the resulting performances. In Study I, four pianists, previously found to be skilled music memorizers, practiced and performed a short piece by André Jolivet over the course of two weeks, during which their practice strategies were studied using semi-structured interviews, and analyses of practice diaries, practice activities, and eye-movement data. The results indicate that the pianists used similar basic strategies but had different cognitive orientations, here called “practice perspectives,” consistent with each individual, in that they focused on different kinds of information while practicing. These practice perspectives may be related to skills and habits in using imagery and music analysis, as well as to professional and educational background. In Study II, 34 piano teachers listened to recordings of the concert performances and evaluated them against 12 statements representing the four practice perspectives identified in Study I. The results did not support the prediction that practice perspectives would be correctly detected by listeners. Nonetheless, practice perspectives can be used to highlight potentially vast differences between the ways in which individual professional classical musicians conceptualize music and make it meaningful to themselves and others. They could be used in the context of music education to increase musicians’ knowledge of different practice strategies and the ability to develop their own preferred working methods.

The aspiring composer’s development is commonly described using the metaphor of finding one’s own composer voice. A central goal for teaching composition in higher music education is to guide students toward finding such a voice—toward personal expression and creativity. In order to shed light on the teaching strategies associated with this goal, we analyzed composition teachers’ views on their students’ typical problems and how they deal with them. We conducted semistructured interviews with higher education composition teachers in Germany and Sweden. By means of thematic analysis, we identified two recurring problem situations. First, students might be insecure about what they want to achieve musically. To address this issue, teachers reported engaging students in self-reflection regarding their aesthetic preferences or specific compositional decisions. Second, students’ work might not seem original enough. Teachers reported addressing this problem by providing new perspectives on students’ music, for example, by prompting students to engage with their materials, acquire new experiences, or consider different musical parameters. Despite an ideal of creative freedom, the teachers thus retain authority over the aesthetic learning process by requiring adherence to a second ideal—that of originality. The findings could strengthen pedagogical practitioners’ efforts to foster the creativity of young composers. 

Music-reading research has not yet fully grasped the variety and roles of different cognitive mechanisms that underlie visual processing of music notation; instead, studies have often explored one factor at a time. Based on prior research, we identified three possible cognitive mechanisms regarding visual processing during music reading: symbol comprehension, visual anticipation, and symbol performance demands. We also summed up the eye-movement indicators of each mechanism. We then asked which of the three cognitive mechanisms were needed to explain how note symbols are visually processed during temporally controlled rhythm reading. In our eye-tracking study, twenty-nine participants performed simple rhythm-tapping tasks, in which the relative complexity of consecutive rhythm symbols was systematically varied. Eye-time span (i.e., ‘‘looking ahead’’) and first-pass fixation time at target symbols were analyzed with linear mixed-effects modeling. As a result, the mechanisms symbol comprehension and visual anticipation found support in our empirical data, whereas evidence for symbol performance demands was more ambiguous. Future studies could continue from here by exploring the interplay of these and other possible mechanisms; in general, we argue that music-reading research should begin to emphasize the systematic creating and testing of cognitive models of eye movements in music reading. 

Studies on music reading have provided insights into the cognitive processes in sight singing. However, there has been limited research on sight singing in a group setting. This study aims to assess how choral singers approach music reading as they perform previously unfamiliar choral scores together. We addressed (1) how singers’ gaze direction is distributed over staff systems, and (2) how their gaze behaviour is influenced by note density and repeated practice. Four quartets, a total of sixteen experienced singers, performed eight Baroque music excerpts three times, while the singers’ eye movements were recorded. Eye-movement measures were analysed in conjunction with the singers’ views regarding their music reading, obtained through questionnaires and group discussions. Results reveal that besides reading their own voice lines, singers typically inspected the neighbouring lines, seeking visual cues to coordinate the performance. The results of a generalised linear mixed model analysis underscore the substantial influence of note density on fixation durations on one’s own lines, but not on other voices’ lines. Practice, on the other hand, exhibited effects only on average fixation duration for one’s own lines, with no significant impact observed on other lines. The study provides evidence of coordination between an actual sight-reading process and a parallel information-gathering process that helps singers relate their parts to the overall musical structure.