New Research: A look at the art music repertoire in Sweden

What repertoire is being performed by the publicly funded music institutions that annually play over 100,000 minutes of Western art music? This question is the basis for a topical report produced by the Swedish Association of Composers in collaboration with KVAST – “Repertoire statistics of twenty music institutions in Sweden during the 2016/2017, 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 seasons.”

The report, which was launched on September 25 at the The Royal College of Music in Stockholm, presents the amount of new and older works, the amount of works composed by women and men, and the amount of works by composers based in Sweden that are being commissioned and performed.

The study is centred around orchestral and chamber music repertoires, as well as the presence of electronic works, and is based on information published by the institutions, specified in their seasonal programs. The report is a follow-up and further development of the survey conducted by Swedish Association of Composers and KVAST in 2015. Among the findings, a slow but positive development can be seen in the frequency of new works being performed, along with a greater occurrence of works created by composers based in Sweden. The number of première performances is also increasing, while they are few in total. The amount of works composed by women is still severely small across the board, but pleasantly, equally represented in the case of première performances.

The report (in Swedish) can be downloaded and read in full here.