EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSICAL TASTE

Abstract

In this paper, the influence of the respondents’ level of education, and that of their parents, on the development of musical taste is analyzed. The analyses are based on the survey research into the cultural practices of the citizens of Serbia from 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2017, headed by the author. The introductory part of the text provides a brief overview of the three sociological standpoints on the relation between taste and belonging to social collectives, whose applicability has been tested in the research on cultural practices in Serbia. The following section provides the results of longitudinal research on the manifested preferences for various types of music genres in Serbia and attitudes which the respondents had towards numerous music genres which were analyzed in these studies. In the third part of the paper, following the presentation of the concept of the cultural capital of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we focus on the research results related to classical music and the opera and explore which social factors influence the formation of esthetic preferences for these music genres. The conclusion contains a brief presentation of the implications of the findings on the activities of audience development for classical music that is mostly studied in the course “Musical Culture” in elementary and secondary schools.