Emotional Abuse in Classical Music Education in Finland: A Study of Finnish Women Musicians’ Experiences

Abstract

Based on interviews with fourteen Finnish women classical music students and graduates from Finnish higher music education institutions, this article sheds light on the under-researched subject of emotional abuse in classical music education.Emotional abuse is defined as patterned deliberate non-contact behavior, such as verbal abuse and emotional neglect (Stirling and Kerr 2008).In this research, such behavior included maleficent and/or demeaning comments; unwarranted anger; humiliation; harmful comparison; denial of approval, attention, or support; and intentionally setting up a student for failure.First, I ask in what ways beliefs and values specific to classical music culture partly allow for emotional abuse.Second, I explore how the understandings and theories of Gatens (1996Gatens ( /2003) ) and Tännsjö (2000) can be applied to explain how beliefs, representations, images, symbols, and narratives specific to classical music culture allow for the prevalence of emotional abuse by impacting norms of behavior that may leave individuals prone to both participating in and accepting emotionally abusive behavior.

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