3. Aesthetic Experiences of Contemporary Music from the Perspectives of a Composer, a Performer, and a Musicologist

Abstract

This chapter addresses the music-related knowledge and aesthetic experience of contemporary classical music from the perspectives of three music experts involved in a specific piece of music―performer, composer, and musicologist. Participants reflected on their emotional and cognitive processes and aesthetic responses to the music they are intimately familiar with and their narratives were analysed using Interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings are congruent with previous research, where the aesthetic experiences induced by contemporary music were related to the cognitive mastering of properties of the musical structure. Furthermore, the analysis showed two types of expertise contributing to the aesthetic experience of contemporary music: theoretical knowledge―learning and acquisition of knowledge about music structure and style; and experiential knowledge―which comes from a person’s mastery of skills in appreciating music as a result of long-term, in-depth involvement with music.