ABSTRACT
This chapter examines teaching and learning of classical music in higher music education (HME) through the master–apprentice model of teaching and discusses how the established importance of the master in classical music teaching negotiates ideas and norms of nation and gender. It draws on interviews with teachers, leaders, and students from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, and the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki and includes analyses three cases of classroom teaching from the fieldwork's participant observations to illustrate and deepen how the tensions around the master–apprentice model occur in teaching situations. Using ethnographic observations and interviews from the three institutions as the empirical material for analysis, the chapter describes and deconstructs how the master–apprentice model of teaching and learning classical music is applied and challenged. To do so, we draw on previous research in music education where the teaching model has been critiqued and discussed. Further, the chapter argues that while this model is still in place in teaching and learning practices in HME, it is increasingly critically challenged and no longer seen as the only pedagogical approach by students and teachers. The constructions of value in musical knowledge, skills, and repertoire contribute to how the master–apprentice model and its critiques are discussed in relation to nationalised and gendered ideals of teaching, which are contextualised in the borderlands between the East and West of Europe.
