Collaborative music making and artistic agency

Summary, in English

The focus of this chapter is on musical agency in professional contexts and in Higher Music Education (HME). What is musical agency? How can musical agency be investigated, promoted, and developed? Cultural-historical activity theory approaches hold a potential for exploring and answering such questions with a dialectical perspective on creativity. Three examples of interventionist studies from a one-to-one teaching situation, a professional improvisation project, and a student string quartet are given. They illustrate how individual musical acts influence and transform collective music making. Methodological conclusions are drawn and suggestions are made for the development of intervention studies of musical practice inspired by Change Laboratory methodology.