By exploring and comparing the history of the twin enterprises Concerts Norway and Concerts Sweden from the 1960s up till today, Bjurström and Hylland show how efforts to democratise and make high quality music accessible to more people were combined with ideas on the necessity to cultivate them, in line with the tradition of Bildung (cultivation, refinement or liberal education). As cultural policy initiatives the two enterprises are considered as ways of negotiating between aesthetics and politics, which result in valuations and assignments of different values to musical genres. The authors offer a thorough understanding of the factors that contributed to changing these valuations and assignments over time, as well as the overall policy and practices of the two musical cultural policy enterprises.