The effect of producing chamber music and performing concerts on teacher candidates' levels of hope and happiness

Hope and happiness, which are concepts within positive psychology, have gained increasing importance today for individuals to pursue a healthy life; they are indispensable in a healthy individual's life. The aim of the present study was to identify the effect of producing chamber music and performing concerts on music teacher candidates' levels of hope and happiness. To this end, an experimental study in a non-control pre- and post-test research design was implemented with 14 cello students enrolled in the Fine Arts Education Department in the Faculty of Education of Gazi University during the 2017-2018 academic year to reveal the effect of producing chamber music and performing concerts on levels of hope and happiness. For the dimension of producing "chamber music", one of the three dimensions of the study, the students were administered the situational hope and subjective happiness scale as a pre-test during the first stage. Subsequently, a chamber music production was conducted with "cello quartets" for two hours a week with each group, totalling 72 hours, within the scope of 9-week lesson plans, at the end of which the situational hope and subjective happiness scales were adminsitered again as post-test-1. At the end of the ninth week, the researcher and her supervisor formed an orchestra by merging the cello quartets and then trained them for three hours each week on two separate days for two weeks (totalling 12 hours) to play the works. In the last stage, with the performance of these two works (by the cello quartet and by the cello orchestra), "chamber music" was produced and subsequent to the production, post-test-2 was utilized to measure once again the students' "situational hope" and their "subjective happiness" levels. As a result of the "chamber music" production, based on the pre- and post-test-1 test results, it was found that there was a significant positive difference between students' levels of hope and happiness, that "chamber music" production increased students' hope and happiness scores, and that "chamber music" training increased students' levels of hope more than did "concert performance". Moreover, it was revealed that "chamber music" training and "concert performance" led to an almost equal level of increase in levels of happiness. It is recommended that producing chamber music anad concert performance, which have a positive impact on the teacher candidates' levels of hope and happines, should be incorporated into the program as of the freshman year and that students should be encouraged in this area.