This thesis’ purpose is to review how music in school settings contributes to children’s development, psychosocial health, and well-being. The undertaken method is a compilation of current research which focuses on different themes within the field of music in school settings: group processes, personality processes, cognitive processes, and contribution to society. The objective is to find out about how music lessons and music projects are being applied in school settings to support children’s health and development. The thesis answers the following research question: In which ways can the practice of music in school settings contribute to prevent psychosocial problems amongst children and youth? To answer this question, research published between 2006 – 2020 is studied and analysed with three theoretical perspectives to provide a better understanding of the material: social capital, cognitive theory as well as protective and risk factors for children’s development. The used method for carrying out this thesis is a research summary, which summarises the results within thematic units. The results of the study show that music in school settings can contribute to positive factors within groups such as social cohesion, communication, prosocial skills, and behaviour, generating a more positive social environment in schools with possibilities to encounter school problems related to aggression. Furthermore, music practice in school can enhance children’s learning processes within academic dimensions and aspects related to children’s self and well-being. Results also show music projects’ significance of contributing differentresources, especially to schools located in socio-economically poorer areas.

This research of distance learning in singing study provides some historical framework of long-distance singing study, including research on three former distance singing courses, which exemplify the "best practices" of their time: Siegel-Myers Correspondence School of Music, the Perfect Voice Institute, and the Hermann Klein Phono-Vocal Method: Based Upon the Famous School of Manuel Garcia. I also discuss current trends in long-distance singing study, including interviews and insights from current long-distance singing teachers using cutting edge technology in their virtual studios. Lastly, I make predictions and projections, based on analyses of past "best practices," where this information may have impact upon future methods of distance singing lessons, including conceivable distance singing course components of online degree programs offered at universities.

This thesis explores the gendered symbolism of women's music lessons in English fiction, 1870-1914. I consider canonical and non-canonical fiction in the context of a wider discourse about music, gender and society. Traditionally, women's music lessons were a marker of upper- and middle-class respectability. Musical ‘accomplishment' was a means to differentiate women in the ‘marriage market', and the music lesson itself was seen to encode a dynamic of obedient submission to male authority as a ‘rehearsal' for married life. However, as the market for musical goods and services burgeoned, musical training also offered women the potential of an independent career. Close reading George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876) and Jessie Fothergill's The First Violin (1877), I discuss four young women who negotiate their marital and vocational choices through their interactions with powerful music teachers. Through the lens of the music lessons in Emma Marshall's Alma (1888) and Israel Zangwill's Merely Mary Ann (1893), I consider the issues of class, respectability and social emulation, paying particular attention to the relationship between aesthetic taste and moral values. I continue by considering George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) alongside Elizabeth Godfrey's Cornish Diamonds (1895), texts in which female pupils exhibit genuine power, eventually eclipsing both their music teachers and the artist-suitors for whom they once modelled. My final chapter discusses three texts which problematize the power of women's musical performance through depicting female music pupils as ‘New Women' in conflict with the people around them: Sarah Grand's The Beth Book (1895), D. H. Lawrence's The Trespasser (1912) and Compton Mackenzie's Sinister Street (1913). I conclude by looking forward to representations of women's music lessons in the modernist period and beyond, with a reading of Katherine Mansfield's ‘The Wind Blows' (1920) as well as Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (1956).