Summary: | Policy changes and higher education reforms challenge performing musician programmes across
Europe. The academisation of arts education means that classical performance programmes are
now marked by strong expectations of research paths, publications, and the standardisation of
courses, grades and positions. Drawing on interviews with ten teachers and leaders within the field
of higher music education, this article discusses notions of mandate, knowledge and research in
classical performance music education in Norway. Against the backdrop of academisation, the aim
of this article is to illuminate central tensions and negotiations concerning mandate, knowledge and
research within higher music education. The problem concerns issues of who should be judged as
qualified and who should have the authority to speak on behalf of the performing music expertise
community. The study is part of the larger study Discourses of Academisation and the Music Profession
in Higher Music Education (DAPHME), conducted by a team of senior researchers in Sweden,
Norway and Germany. Through an analytic-theoretical reading of the empirical data, informed by
Foucault’s power/knowledge concept, two discourses on mandate are identified (the awakening
discourse and the Bildung discourse) as well as three discourses on knowledge (the handicraft discourse,
the entrepreneurship discourse and the discourse of critical reflection) and two discourses
on research (the collaborative discourse and the ‘perforesearch’ discourse). The latter of the two
research discourses pinpoints a subject position as a musician/researcher with knowledge, craft and
skills in both music performing and research.
|