The Nuremberg Music-Ecological Approach: Why are Some Musicians Internationally Successful and Others Not?

Success in music depends on a number of cru-cial factors with musical talent figuring promi-nently in gifted research. However, in the Nu-remberg Music-Ecological Approach presented in this paper a different view is taken. Instead of talents and factors, the concept of available resources in an individual´s actiotope (Ziegler, 2005) is put in the center of our analysis. Educa-tional Capital refers to exogenous resources and comprises five different forms of resources: Economic Educational Capital, Cultural Educa-tional Capital, Social Educational Capital, Infra-structural Educational Capital and Didactic Ed-ucational Capital. Learning Capital refers to en-dogenous resources and also comprises five dif-ferent forms of resources: Organismic Learning Capital, Actional Learning Capital, Telic Learn-ing Capital, Episodic Learning Capital and At-tentional Learning Capital. Results of an empir-ical study are reported which was designed to test the claim that successful professional musi-cians possess more Educational Capital as well as more Learning Capital than their less suc-cessful colleagues. The hypothesis was con-firmed with a sample of professional musicians who were successful on a local, regional or in-ternational level.