Sang og syngning i skolen

Dansk skolesang mellem håndgribelig og uhåndgribelig kulturarv

Resumé

Songs and singing in school: Danish school singing between tangible and intangible cultural heritage

For centuries, singing has played a vital role in elementary schools in Denmark. During the 20th Century, singing’s significance – in Denmark as well as elsewhere in Europe – was gradually downplayed, and singing was reduced from an independent subject and an overarching activity to a subdiscipline under the broader subject of “Mus­ic”. In the 2020’s a renewed interest in communal singing is surging in Denmark; this also entails an increasing focus on the benefits of school singing. Political and societal discourse is fraught with wishes of revitalizing singing culture in schools. However, the arguments to support such wishes are quite different in nature, some­times lead­ing to misconceptions. This article aims to show that arguments for school singing fall within a continuum between two poles: In one end of the continuum, singing is valued as a way to preserve a culturally valued repertoire of songs, and in the other end, singing is val­ued as a beneficial activity regardless of what is being sung. The purpose of the article is thus to establish a conceptual distinction that has hitherto been unclear, underscored by the inability of the Danish language to discriminate clearly between “song” and “singing”. To support our case, we mobilize the conceptual pair of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, arguing that these can be mapped on to the distinction between school singing as preservation of songs vs. as an activity in its own right. Further, we trace the occurrence and connotation of the word “song” in Danish public newspapers from the late 18th Century to the 2020’s, showing that the term does indeed fluctuate between connotations of tangible and intangible cultural heritage throughout the period.