ABSTRACT
The literary visa occupies an ambivalent middle ground in Swedish musical life, comprising many instances of both public and private, elaborate and simple, professional and amateur, urban and rural, popular and intimate. Recordings of singers, archival material as well as interviews, all show that the literary visa changed both stylistically and from a sociocultural point of view. This chapter highlights some of the musical changes, and their causes by analyzing the repertoire and performance practice in their cultural and social context. The visa is a cultural property shared by people from a broad social spectrum. It can be sung by both trained and untrained singers, by professionals as well as amateurs, and it is largely the practice at the amateur and semi-professional level that forms the basis for the professional level.
