ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ideas of nationalised and gendered music, interpretation, and teaching as expressed in interviews with teachers, leaders, and students in classical music from three European higher music education (HME) institutions. Starting out by exploring and analysing how ideas about national music, national styles of interpretation, and teaching were strongly present among interview participants, and how the participants at the same time denied fixed essential nationalised or gendered styles of classical music or ways of teaching classical music. The tension between the discussion of nationalised and gendered classical music and the resistance to essentialism included ideas of what a repertoire stands for—that some musical works symbolically and materially represents a country, group, or region. In the chapter, we explore, for example, how Hungarian ways of playing the piano were described as part of Hungarian belonging; but also how interviewees constructed a nationalised “we” that was gendered and juxtaposed to “others” (for example, Russian ways of teaching and playing the piano). Through tying these expressions to ideals of (masculine) masters, the chapter further maps the construction of the nationalised and gendered belonging of musicians in the borderlands of Europe today. Using case examples from interviews, it analyses some ideals and norms found within multiple Europes, and the tension between the nationalised ideals and the individualism and internationalisation of classical music work that interview participants also spoke to. The chapter's analysis is coloured by the time and place of the study, Eastern parts of Europe in 2022, the year of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
