This symposium aims to offer a picture of how and from what perspectives musical meaning making in Swedish compulsory schools, has been and currently is being investigated. The last years two educational reforms with strong influence on the subject music in compulsory school have been launched: A new curriculum with syllabuses and a new grading system, as well as a new teacher education program are currently being implemented. The expectations of what pupils in schools should be able to handle in the subject music, have been more clarified, specified, and subject specific, while at the same time few student are recruited for music teacher training programmes for the years 1-9. Hence, music education research that focus how musical meaning making in this new setting is taking place, what the steering documents could imply, and what the conditions for musical meaning making look like is important to pay attention to. By mapping what we already know, and what is currently investigated, we can also get information about what should and could be investigated in the future. Musical learners experience music as listeners, performers and composers in different styles and contexts. Through meaning making in the musical world pupils should reach a feeling of I can express myself through music, I can compose, I can make music, and I can listen to and experience music. In such processes pupils are expected to experience and learn to handle, for example, form, texture, timbre, pitch, linearity, harmonies, rhythms, and movement, in different styles and contexts. The combination of musical parameters, how they sound as one, constitutes music, or a phenomenon possible to experience as music. Hence, music is not constituted solely by the sum of the musical parameters, but also by the gaps between them; gaps which make meaning-making possible. Through interaction within musical styles and social contexts music show itself as a whole, where acoustic, structural, bodily, tensional, emotional, and existential dimensions of meaning-making are offered.In earlier studies I have investigated how musical meaning making is made possible in Swedish schools from a teachers perspective, and currently I am, together with Olle Zandén, investigating how the implementation of the new grading system influence possibilities for musical learning, as well as to what extent the new syllabuses offers holistic musical experience, partly together with Susanna Leijonhufvud. In the introduction I will briefly mention and attempt to map earlier published research connected to the theme of the symposium by Börje Stålhammar, Ralf Sandberg, Claes Ericsson, and Monica Lindgren, together with more recent studies by Anniqa Lagercrantz, Mikael Persson, Katharina Dahlbäck, Manfred Scheid and Tommy Strandberg. However , the symposium will primarily present recent studies by the researchers themselves that approach musical meaning making in the compulsory schools from different angels and theoretical perspectives . The short presentations will be summarized and discussed by Catharina Christophersen. In the following the focus of the participating researchers’ work is presented.