Att pynta tiden : En studie om prästers och kyrkomusikers urval av musik i samband med kyrkliga förrättningar

Sammanfattning: This essay explores the way in which priests and church-musicians choose music for different ceremonies such as funerals, sunday service, baptism and weddings. The questions at issue regard how the clerks personal preferences, the Swedish Church’s cultural heritage and the attending community contributes to the musical choice at large. Other complementing questions explore how different rooms affect what is seen as suitable music, and also how the clerks value live music compared to pre-recorded music in the halls of ceremony. The exploration and answering of these questions were done through interviewing both priests and church-musicians. In the analysis of the produced material mainly Bourdieu's concepts of taste, fields, illusio, habitus, cultural-, and educational capital were applied. To further grasp the intricate inner workings of the church-musicians and the priests reasoning when selecting music, such as emphasizing openness, inclusion and musical width, the study also give valuable insights in the significance of how the fields of the clerks interact with the field of the assembly, the cultural heritage of the national church and societal norms as a whole, most notably in regards to the selective struggle between tradition and renewal. The findings in this essay contributes to the academic field with new knowledge of how music is used in religious contexts to mediate theological messages and aesthetics. As such, this essay is more focused on the horizontal, rather than the vertical, aspects of how music is interacted with, thus shaping peoples expectations and perceptions of different rooms and of the church services. These aspects play a pivotal part in keeping the identity of the given community alive, and is therefore an important phenomenon to understand in regards to the Swedish Church.