KULTURFRÅGAN. Om betraktelsen av kultur och valet av musik i Kulturfrågan Kontrapunkt

Abstract

This essay strives to analyze how the choice of music in the public service produced tv-show Kulturfrågan Kontrapunkt’s season from 2025 correlates with ideas of high and low forms of culture. The inquiry shows that the majority of the music is strongly rooted in the classical music tradition. How the choice of music relates to ideas of higher forms of culture is explained through terms such as culturalization, canonization, democratization, cultivation and cultural capital, the last taking inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital which acts as a theoretical framework for this essay. The analysis delves into how themes of inequality of classes in society plays a part in, among other things, heightening classical music’s status in society, something which is embodied in Kulturfrågan Kontrapunkt by a constant reiterating of the importance of cultivation through learning of highly viewed cultural expressions.