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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
(Re)thinking organ improvisation: Revisiting musical practice
PROJECT LEADER:
Karin Johansson, PhD, MMus.
Project description:
The organ as an instrument is heavily loaded with musical heritage and ritual conventions. At the same time it is a flexible music machine that incorporates and develops new tendencies. With the double focus on written and oral music, organ improvisation has a crossover character, where the individual organist acts as a meeting point for genres and embodies tensions between preserving musical tradition and representing the avant-garde. As a musical practice, it is an arena for individual agency and collective conformity.
(Re)thinking organ improvisation is an artistic research project with the aim to explore how individuals’ musical language(s) and creative strategies in improvisation relate to socio-historical and musical structures in differing performance contexts. The project is carried out 2010-2012 as a series of workshops and concerts of improvisation in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Helsinborg, Oslo and Copenhagen. In a meeting of theory and musical practice, six organists play and think together against the background of results from my thesis Organ improvisation – activity, action and rhetorical practice (2008). Methodologically, a combination of practice-based, reflective and collaborative methods is used. The study points to questions about what the musical goal of improvisation is and could/should be, and about where the practice is heading in the future.
This project forms part of the larger project (Re)thinking improvisation in and through music, funded by The Swedish Research Council.
Musical learning in one-to-one singing tuition: obstacles and options in a dynamic field
PROJECT LEADER:
Karin Johansson, PhD, MMus.
Project description:
A collaborative, longitudinal case study with one participating teacher and two students was carried out at Malmö Academy of Music 2008-2009, in the framework of the project Students’ Ownership of Learning (SOL) based at the Royal Academy in Stockholm. With a focus on the teaching situation and the relations between education and professional life on individual and collective levels, the aim was to study (i) the students’ development as musicians and singers, (ii) the interaction between the teacher’s intentions and the students’ expectations, and (iii) the development and change of the teaching situation. The data consisted of video recordings of lessons, qualitative interviews, written reflections, and stimulated-recall discussions. Singing tuition was seen as a discursive practice and the analysis focused on relationships between goals, expectations and the educational situation:
• The student’s desires, talents and limitations
• The teacher’s goals, values and teaching ambitions
• Traditions, tacit dimensions and historical patterns in the field of one-to-one tutition
• The rules and practice of the musical profession that the students are trained for. Preliminary results point at interesting contradictions in the practice, as, for example, between a traditional focus on a solo singer identity and students’ ambitions to develop their voices as ensemble instruments. The study suggests that obstacles in the teaching situation may be overcome by using professional practice as a developmental transfer and that collaborative studies may function as tools for enhancing students’ independent musical knowledge development.
Inside perspectives on Swedish choral practice
PROJECT LEADER:
Karin Johansson, PhD, MMus.
Project description:
Very few research projects in Music Education and Music have so far been made on choir singing, choral leadership and learning. Against this background and in the framework of Körcentrum Syd I conducted a qualitative interview study 2008-2009 with 26 choir leaders from all parts of Sweden, The purpose of this study was (i) to explore prominent performers’ perspectives on central and important topics related to choir, and (ii) to map out research areas and questions with artistic and pedagogical relevance for the field of musical practice.
In the theoretical framework of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), contemporary Swedish discourses on choral practice are analysed and related to the musical practice. Where is choral activity in Sweden heading? Is it possible to speak of it as one phenomenon?
The study illustrates successful choral leaders’ learning trajectories and points to how they relate to what can be called the loss of common grounds. Furthermore, it points to structures on a collective level and suggests future directions for Swedish choral practice in education and performance. The study should be seen as related to the international research network Choir in Focus, lead by me and Ursula Geisler (Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper, Lund University), and funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.
Last modified 30 May 2012
Karin Johansson
Post-doctoral research fellow
Teachers (Malmö Academy of Music)
Phone:
+4640325417
E-mail:
Karin.Johansson@mhm.lu.se
Göran Folkestad
Professor in Music Education
Teachers (Malmö Academy of Music)
Phone:
+4640325478
E-mail:
Goran.Folkestad@mhm.lu.se
Hans Hellsten
Teachers (Malmö Academy of Music)
Phone:
+4640325488
E-mail:
Hans.Hellsten@mhm.lu.se