Emma Sohlgren

Italian Opera in Sweden during the Age of Liberty 1719–1772

In my PhD research I am looking to gain a greater understanding for the ways in which Italian opera was introduced in Sweden in the mid eighteenth century and how that can be connected to the various claims to power that different individuals and groups had during the weak monarchy of the age of liberty. Who imported Italian opera to Sweden and why?

Queen Lovisa Ulrika's opera productions in the 1750s have been the object of previous research, but the existence of arias and operas in other social context, such as public concerts and plays or in private music collections, was likely of great importance for the broader diffusion of opera and lay the foundation for its development in Sweden during the latter part of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century.

Through studying previously unexplored source material, we can gain a better understanding of the role of opera in Sweden during the Age of liberty and of how Italian opera might have been used both inside and outside the court in order to strengthen political interests or the status of certain individuals. This can provide new perspectives to the use of opera seria and contribute to the ongoing discussion of the social function of opera in Europe during this time, as well as shed light on the processes of cultural exchange and appropriation and the role of music as a marker of status and identity.

Erik Bergwall

Musical intertextuality and learned counterpoint: a case study of the music composed and collected by John Baldwin

My PhD project will explore and evaluate concepts such as intertextuality and transtextuality to describe aspects of interconnectedness between works of composers of late Renaissance England, looking particularly at the music collected by the musician and copyist John Baldwin (c.1560-1615).

Baldwin is unique in the way he collected and copied music into his own scorebook (sometimes called his "commonplace" book). The repertory is eclectic: secular madrigals are copied next to mass movements and motets. There is also a section of the book containing what seems to be didactic pieces or etudes. It is in these pieces of "learned" counterpoint that Baldwin seems to have been particularly influenced by his colleagues, whose pieces he copied next to his own.

By describing the similarities (also exploring the question "what is similarity in music") between Baldwin's pieces and those of his colleagues, and by discussing the border-like territory between what could be described as a common musical "grammar" and a particular style or genre, I hope to gain a clearer understanding of Baldwin and his professional network of musicians.

Mathias Boström

Phonograph for the future: the idea and practice around the Swedish archival recordings 1896-1930

Along with recording technology developments around 1900 came a new way of storing sound.
Besides the novelty of the technique and commercial production of phonograms, recordings with documentary intentions were made to be preserved for the future. The dissertation project involves archival records in Sweden during the period 1896-about 1930, when the phonograph was the technique used for these purposes. The questions deal with matters of why people recorded the sound (especially music) in this purpose, what was recorded, by whom, and how it happened.

Julia Schlichtina Björklund

The Russian Good Friday Mass in a historical perspective

The Russian Good Friday Mass can be traced back to the Byzantine liturgy, and its early Christian roots. It shall in the thesis serve as an illustration to the Russian church music development in general. Particular attention is given to its interpretation of neums, the musical notes used in the medieval manuscripts in the whole Christian world - in the Russian Church until the late 1600s. Neums are still used by the Russian Old Believers and in the Greek Church. They are not fully translatable into modern notation and they also specify other aspects of the music.

Kjell-Åke Hamrén

Sven Karpe and the Swedish violin pedagogy

During World War II, when most of Sweden was set on war footing, Swedes were forced to concern themselves with emergency preparedness and supply problems. Not only public administration, businesses and nonprofit Sweden were forced to a time out from normal living and working circumstances, also the cultural sphere halted pending the outcome of the war. When peace finally came Sweden, as well as Western countries in general, saw a prolonged boom that in some respects lasted until the early 1970s. The state took one initiative after another and made large investments in education, public welfare and infrastructure. 

Kjell-Åke Hamréns thesis is examining a post-war phenomenon of precisely this nature, namely the professionalization of violin teaching violin at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He is also looking into how an entirely new profession, that of violin pedagogues for the community music schools, arose at the Royal College at the same time, and how this was critical for the long-term improvement of standards in the violinist profession. A special case study is devoted to the violinist and pedagogue Sven Karpe, whose work as a teacher at the Royal College from 1950 and at summer courses for talented young violinists in Kall in Jämtland from 1954, came to be highly influential in the development of violin teaching methods. The emphasis of the thesis is on the possible interaction between the state initiated reform policy within higher music education and the work led by Sven Karpe to identify teaching methods that would promote sufficient teaching outreach to allow for real top level results in Swedish violin playing.

Carolien Hulshof

Music and change in Swahili gendered society: unyago in Zanzibar

In my research I will focus on unyago, a particular initiation ritual with music and dance performed in East Africa which marks the transformation of a girl into a woman. It involves the performance of dances and songs, and a set of instructions, treating an entire range of women’s issues such as sexuality, desire and orgasm, fertility, pregnancy and childcare.
I will study unyago among the Waswahili of the Zanzibar archipelago, a hybrid Islamic society containing many different elements from various origins that have intermingled for centuries. An important characteristic of Swahili society that follows from the Islamic religion is gender segregation, with restricted movement of women in the public sphere.
I will show how unyago plays a part in the contestation of set social rules and how women negotiate their position through this ritual. This study will examine and analyze the music and dance part, or ngoma, of unyago, to understand how and why music offers a window to understand change in society, and how musical changes reflect and shape changes in gendered power relations. 

This project is connected to the research programme Engaging Vulnerability, which is hosted by the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology.

Helen Rossil

Abstract, Helen Rossil

Kingo Style and Brorson Song – Traditional Hymn Singing in Denmark

From hymnals and Sound Recordings 

This dissertation investigates folk hymn singing traditions in Denmark in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which are rooted in the congregational singing from times of the Reformation. The melodic and vocal style of these traditions are closely connected to the hymnals of Thomas Kingo (1634-1703) and Hans Adolph Brorson (1694-1764). The folk hymn singing mainly thrived in environments of revivalism. The traditions were transmitted until modern times, where five musicologists made audio recordings with the groups of people who could still sing in the old style. 

The dissertation draws on theory in the intersection of hymnology - with emphasis on the hymnals and the liturgy - and ethnomusicology - with emphasis on music as practice, agency, memory, and experience. In this interdisciplinary field, issues of hymnal-culture and audio recording are investigated. The dissertation explores four cases of Kingo- and Brorson singing, developing a method that combines the diachronic axis of the analysis, which explores processes of tradition and memory, with a synchronic axis that explores the social and religious interaction of participatory singing at a given moment of time. The study especially focuses on the way in which the singers vocally and musically experience and embody the social and confessional community, first of all in terms of the texture of the singing. The dissertation identifies features of unison, of heterophony and of dense textures. The study also investigates how the musical experience can stimulate not only community, but also conflicts in the relationship to others. The dissertation concludes that the study of sounding music can lead to new views on history, and that Danish history of song culture is more multifacetted than is commonly known.

Key words: Traditional hymn singing, hymnals, chorale books, revivalism, participatory performance, liturgy, Kingo and Brorson. 

Last modified: 2022-05-06
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