Piano Musicians Identity Negotiations in the Context of the Academy and Transition to Working Life : A Socio-cultural Approach
Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The study as a whole examined piano musicians identity negotiations in the context of their music studies and their transition to working life. This research report and the articles accompanying it also introduce a socio-culturally oriented approach to the study of musical identities. Study I explored adult instrumental students identity work while negotiating entry to a prestigious music academy. The specific focus was on how students accounts of their competencies vis-à-vis their peers are implicated in their musical identity work, and how students accounts of their own and others participation in and engagement with the musical practices of the academy resourced their musical identity work. A further concern was how students accounts of life-courses and trajectories were implicated in their musical identity work. Study II focused on how solo piano students identity projects were mediated within the student-teacher relationship. It examined how solo piano students identity projects were mediated within and in relation to their interpretative work on the canon, undertaken along with their teacher, and further, how their identity as a solo piano student was negotiated in relation to other ongoing musical identity projects. Study III focused on career-young professional pianists talk about the transition from study within a music academy to working life. The focus was especially on the ways in which they characterised the nature and significance of this transition, from very traditional practice, and how they (re-)negotiated their professional identities as working musicians and pianists in their contemporary working lives. The participants of the overall study were ten solo piano students who were interviewed once during their studies at the Sibelius Academy. Four of these original participants were followed up for about eight years from the original interviews when entering professional working life. The starting point for the methods used in the study was the socio-cultural framework plus qualitative thematic analysis. Within this study, identity negotiations and the relation between individual and social aspects of identity were researched through the collection of the musicians accounts of their musical histories and experiences situated in the daily practices of their study and work. The analytical method involved the initial identification of key themes, with the detailed analysis then focusing on the particular ways in which the participants talked about the process of becoming musicians. The results showed how identity work is a complex, mediated process. The comparative dynamics amongst peers were seen as a key mediator of the identity work done during studies at the academy. Furthermore, student-teacher interactions emerged as crucial sites for identity negotiations. It seemed that a collegial and collaborative approach to the interpretation of music, and the associated understanding that came with it, fostered professional growth and enhanced artistic confidence. This work also highlighted the conflicts and problematic identity positions that emerge in the creative relationship between the teacher and the student a relationship in which visions and insights are not necessarily shared. The analyses also exemplify how in some circumstances the envisaged reactions of the teacher and the associated risk of troubled identity positions problematised students engagement with popular forms of music-making. Furthermore, it was observed that the creation of novel interpretations of pieces from the canon form a central aspect of one s personal musical identity and is a socially and culturally situated act. The results of this study also highlighted how, especially during the students transition to the music community, they seemed unable to define community-level norms and expectations. Moreover, they talked against some of these. Talking against emerged as strongly agentic identity work. Thereafter, in the context of the transition from music studies to working life, there was clear evidence of the emergence of the informants own stories , own ways and the use of inner resources. Agency was thus clearly observable in the career-young professional musicians construction and re-construction of their own creative practices and paths. These paths were not fixed or dependent on communal expectations; rather, they reflected freedom, widening perspectives and independence, the embracing of multiple influences, and the anchor- ing of individual lives in more holistic ways. One of the key elements in the process of becoming agentic seemed to be the acceptance of multiplicity.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Sini Juuti
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1590184038