Music Teachers' Everyday Conceptions of Musicality

The purpose in this paper was to investigate music teachers' everyday conceptions of musicality. A pilot study involving music teachers was performed (n-24). The teachers were asked: What is musicality for you? The following categories were found: musical achievement, musical experience, musical communication. Furthermore, four teachers in music teacher education and four class-music teachers in compulsory school were interviewed. There seems to be two main categories: an absolute view suggesting musicality to be biologically inherited and a more relativistic one, that assumes equal musical possibilities of everyone. All of the subjects considered musicality not so much a question of either inheritance or environment, but a mix of both. Some intrapersonal contradictions also seemed to exist. Finally, some implications for music teacher education were discussed.