Music and Aesthetics in Education: Towards a Contemporary View

Abstract

Abstract Aesthetics provides an important philosophical and practical dimension to arts and music education. It helps teachers and learners consider art more deeply, and find room to explore artistic meaning about the personal, creative, emotional and transformational aspects of human life. However, aesthetic education has not always achieved what it has potential to do because of its disciplinary orientation. At the same time, attempts to negate aesthetic education have neglected to foreground the creative insights and meanings of personal experience, and as such, have not clearly connected with music (and arts) education. The condition of contemporary education and society necessitates a revision of aesthetics in education that is responsive to the changing nature of art, technology and education. The changing means of music construction and meaning has altered the power and reach of music in society and education. It is proposed that a revised notion of contemporary aesthetics in music education needs to operate on two levels. One, at the personal level, music learners need to be able to articulate and reflect on their music learning experiences. This requires an understanding of aesthetics that is focused on the individual and their discovery of music. At another level, a contemporary aesthetics reaches into places and spaces outside music study. As portrayed in the Nietzschean Dionysian drive, this may include transdisciplinary and exploratory trajectories where music study stands visibly and evocatively alongside other subjects of learning. This involves finding space for the power of music to transform emotion, thinking and action in every area of learning. These two levels and trajectories of contemporary aesthetic education can work together in dialogue despite their intrinsic differences.