Dilemmaer i skandinavisk korlederutdanning

Abstract

Within higher education, programmes in choral conducting are offered of varying kinds and at different levels, from dedicated programmes to single courses that are embedded in other music programmes. The choral practice field is varied; choral leadership is partly a generic music competence and partly a profession. The variety and social reach of the choral movement suggest that the educational offering in choral conducting should be manifold in type and quantity in order to supply the practice field with qualified conductors. In this chapter we take a renewed look at material from three previous studies: (1) a mapping of Scandinavian choral leader education, based on document analysis and interviews with tutors and newly graduated conductors; (2) a quantitative survey on choral conducting competencies, where more than 600 conductors in Norway, Sweden, and Germany participated; and (3) an interview study of twenty Norwegian choral conductors on their professional careers. Although the findings from these studies were salient enough, the implications for choral conducting education were not equally clear. The point of departure for this chapter is that this is due to a series of difficult trade-offs, and we ask the question: What dilemmas do we face when educating choral conductors, and how might we understand these in light of the composite data? The material is analysed by drawing on established pedagogic categories, Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (1998), Jansson’s competence model for choral conductors (2018), and Varvarigou and Durrant’s discussion framework for choral conducting (2011).