The Nuremberg Music-Ecological Approach: Why are some musicians internationally successful and others not?

Success in music depends on a number of crucial factors with musical talent figuring prominently in gifted research. However, in the Nuremberg 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. Educational Capital refers to exogenous resources and comprises five different forms of resources: Economic Educational Capital, Cultural Educational Capital, Social Educational Capital, Infrastructural Educational Capital and Didactic Educational Capital. Learning Capital refers to endogenous resources and also comprises five different forms of resources: Organismic Learning Capital, Actional Learning Capital, Telic Learning Capital, Episodic Learning Capital and Attentional Learning Capital. Results of an empirical study are reported which was designed to test the claim that successful professional musicians possess more Educational Capital as well as more Learning Capital than their less suc-cessful colleagues. The hypothesis was confirmed with a sample of professional musicians who were successful on a local, regional or international level.