Adolf Fredrik's Music School

Adolf Fredrik's Music School
Main building of City campus (built 1907–10)
Information
Type	Municipal junior high school (Swedish: grundskola)
Established	1939
Principal	Lars-Göran Jacobsson (City campus)
Principal	Petter Carlsson (Farsta campus)
Gender	Mixed
Age	9 to 16
Enrollment	Approximately 1,080 junior high in the City campus and 120 in the Farsta campus (2015)
Campus	Urban
Newspaper	Lyran
Tuition	Free
Website	(mostly in Swedish)

Adolf Fredrik's Music School (Swedish: Adolf Fredriks Musikklasser) is a general municipal junior high school (Swedish: grundskola) in , Sweden with a focus on choral music, and highly competitive admission based on audition in singing and musical ability. The school has two campuses (City and Farsta) and three youth choirs of high international standard. Many professional musicians are alumni.

This article is about the music school and its associated youth choirs. Adolf Fredrik's Youth Choir is part of the Adolf Fredrik Church and has only its name in common with the school. Adolf Fredriks Madrigalkör used to be associated with the church, but is now independent from both the church and the school.

The school was founded in 1939 on the initiative of Hugo Hammarström (1891–1974) and offered the first music classes in Sweden, based on models such as King's College, Cambridge England, Die Städtische Singschule,Augsburg, Germany, and the Copenhagen Boys Choir in Denmark. The purpose was to give musically inclined pupils additional training in singing, sight-reading, choral singing and more. Hammarström continued his work at the music school until 1957.

In 1982–83 the school was the focus of a heated controversy, AF-striden (literally The AF fight), between those who felt that special classes of any kind and Adolf Fredrik's Music School in particular represent an "elitist" approach, and those who felt that all students have a right to develop their abilities as far as possible. One factor that inflamed the battle was a study of similar music classes in Norrköping, where it could be shown that the pupils' parents mostly, but not exclusively, had high status occupations. The Swedish Nobel Prize laureate, sociologist and politician Alva Myrdal took a strong stance on the issue in an interview in Svenska Dagbladet by Mats Johansson on July 14, 1983. On September 17, 1983 she published a letter in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter where she explained that the goal of the Swedish school system, equal schooling to all, means that all pupils should be encouraged to develop their abilities. She also warned against repression of special abilities under the guise of elitism. This effectively ended the controversy.