Svenska Rikskonserteroch kulturpolitikens estetik

Abstract

Although aesthetics, primarily in the shape of the arts, can be seen as the raison d’etre of cultural policy, it is seldom in the forefront of cultural policy research. This article focuses on the aesthetics of Concerts Sweden, which was founded in 1968 and closed down in 2010. With the aim to give high quality music to all citizens around the country and its concentration on mobile concerts and the production of records, Concerts Sweden initially rested on a Bildung aesthetics thoroughly elaborated in the white papers underlying its foundation. This Bildung aesthetics was based on classical views on Bildung and the emergence of modern theories of aesthetics, from the late eighteenth century by foremost Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller. Kant changed the way of looking at aesthetics, but in the 20th century his view on the a priori based universal character of aesthetical judgment lost its prior credibility. This is also reflected in the restricted aesthetic claims of most national cultural policies during the century, and in the history of Concerts Sweden (Svenska Rikskonserter), which musical-aesthetic platform changed when the aim to “counteract the negative effects of commercialism” was introduced as one of the goals of the new Swedish national cultural policy in 1974. With the support of this goal Concerts Sweden drifted away from the Bildung aesthetics prescribed for it in the white papers when it was founded, but without explicitly abandoning it. The history of Concerts Sweden shows that aesthetics had a stronger position in Swedish cultural policy prior to its reorganization in the 1970s, when it became more subordinated to political viewpoints. From this point of view, the Swedish cultural policy of music successively takes on a post-aesthetic character from the 1970s, in the sense that it no longer takes principle stands in matters of aesthetics, except in pragmatic ways, as when it for example comes to the assignment of subsidies based on judgments of aesthetical values or qualities.

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