Music and interaction were the focus of interest of this PhD-study. Early music education experiences were examined in three groups in the empirical study by comparing mother-child interaction. The study is within the field of early childhood music education. Multiple strategies study, including qualitative and quantitative methods and various ways of collecting and analyzing data, are employed in the study, which utilizes theoretically a combination of three main music-related theories: interaction-development (Hinde 1997), music-language (Brown 2000) and music-emotions (Juslin 2001). The study draws on philosophical, practical and didactic/pedagogical ideas evident in early childhood music education. Musical and holistic development is described seen as starting prenatally. The philosophical background is phenomenological, while the three-part empirical study is an adaptation of an action study conducted in 2006 with systematic video observation as a main method of data collection and analysis. The analysis was conducted on the basis of several theories, using three software programs: Annotation, HyperResearch and Praat. Pregnant mothers, the empirical group E (n=7), attended the prenatal musical sessions; E (7+7) and the control, C1 (n=7+7), the postnatal sessions, and all the three groups of mothers (n=7+7+7) and babies (n=8+7+7), E, C1 and C2, participated in all the study procedures. The last questionnaire was conducted with 12 to 19-month-old children (mean 16.2 months). Connections between music and interaction were observed in the musical and communicational behaviour of mother and baby, and in the infant’s musical/holistic development. Music education was found to have strong connections with early interaction due to the emotions and behaviour manifested during that interaction. A very clear mother-child bond was created as a result of the shared prenatal musical experiences. Early interaction can be musically supported.
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