by David E. Knauss
Music teachers are accustomed to using the word Aesthetics when discussing music, but many do not know how to define it, how to describe the process of an aesthetic event, or how to teach for it.
Definition: The Aesthetic Experience is one in which a person may “experience” art beyond the constructs of language. Music is linguistically the least discursive of all art forms, yet, paradoxically, it exists solely in sound. Music is unique in being the most direct channel for expressing the verbally inexpressible. One may attempt to describe an Aesthetic Experience with words such as, “The music was like the performer taking your heart out of your body, playing around with it like putty, and putting it back inside you. I really can't put it into words!” “The sunset was so spectacular, I really can't describe it to you. You just should have been there!” “I can’t tell you what a feeling it was seeing the ocean for the very first time in my life in the moonlight!” We savor these moments for years after! What is happening inside us to create these wordless experiences? The Aesthetic Experience is the interaction of a certain balance of tendencies (or desires) within us that are fulfilled or denied. Too much fulfillment causes boredom. Too much denial causes confusion and misunderstanding. Great art is that which achieves an acceptable balance between fulfillment and denial, across epochs of time. The Aesthetic Experience substantially justifies teaching music education, because music, when taught through the Aesthetic Experience paradigm, affords students unique and valuable experiences beyond all other arts and sciences.
Description: Four elements are involved in the Aesthetic Experience: Art, Subjective Reality, Creative Ability, and Perceptive Ability. (1) Art is all the ways and means that people have contrived to organize materials to produce meanings inherent in the materials and their organization. Great art (such as famous masterpieces in music) is that which achieves an acceptable balance between fulfillment and denial, across epochs of time. (2) Subjective Reality is every part of the human experience inside each human that is touched when the experience cannot be expressed in words. (3) Creative Ability is the ability to manipulate the elements of an art medium to achieve the desired tendencies with their chosen fulfillment or denial. In music, this could be a composer creating, arranging, manipulating, composing, and improvising. (4) Perceptive Ability is the ability to perceive the manipulation of elements to achieve an empathetic response to the tendencies of fulfillment and denial present in a work of art.
Aesthetic Experience Process: How does one explain the Aesthetic Experience process? Here is one example. Mozart, using his Creative Ability through his Subjective Reality while creating Symphony 40, aesthetically interacted with the music elements individually as well as their composite whole. We listen to Symphony 40, using our Perceptive Ability through our Subjective Reality, and we touch Mozart and his Subjective Reality. An artist’s Subjective Reality lives long past his/her life-time. In essence, we can connect with another human and his/her Subjective Reality and therefore be more human!
Teaching for the Aesthetic Experience: An Aesthetic Experience is much like the realm of relationships. One cannot create a relationship for another person, but one can creatively provide many opportunities for relationships to happen. Likewise, one cannot create an aesthetic experience for another person, but one can creatively provide many opportunities for aesthetic experiences. How does one teach for the Aesthetic Experience? It is a very short step from musical perfection into aesthetics. When students achieve a certain level of competency in rhythm and tonal music skills and performance skills, they become free to enter into the feel of music. A music teacher must consciously encourage students to open their hearts to feel music. For example, I’ll never forget the first time students experienced this freedom. A fourth grade class became so artistically focused with playing, singing, and moving an Orff arrangement that they were overcome and awed by the beauty of the music. The performance was so artistic that tears involuntarily ran down my face. I could not stop them. The students were so awed by the experience that they froze in their places in silence at the end. One girl near the front of the class, not daring to break the awe, whispered, “Mr. Knauss, what happened?” The world of art is significant in music education because music educators can greatly increase students' Perceptive Abilities.
Please feel free to contact me at any time, as often as you please, with any mentoring, music teaching, music curriculum, or classroom management questions.
David E. Knauss
Ph.D. in Music Education.
www.classroom-music.info
Dr. Knauss mentors student teachers and regular teachers into teaching excellence. He taught for 3 decades in inner-city public schools, winning over street kids into being like family, became one of the principle curriculum writers for an award-winning, internationally-recognized music department. He retired from public schools, completed a Ph.D. in Music Education, and presently is an adjunct music education professor at Baptist Bible College.
Music teachers are accustomed to using the word Aesthetics when discussing music, but many do not know how to define it, how to describe the process of an aesthetic event, or how to teach for it.
Definition: The Aesthetic Experience is one in which a person may “experience” art beyond the constructs of language. Music is linguistically the least discursive of all art forms, yet, paradoxically, it exists solely in sound. Music is unique in being the most direct channel for expressing the verbally inexpressible. One may attempt to describe an Aesthetic Experience with words such as, “The music was like the performer taking your heart out of your body, playing around with it like putty, and putting it back inside you. I really can't put it into words!” “The sunset was so spectacular, I really can't describe it to you. You just should have been there!” “I can’t tell you what a feeling it was seeing the ocean for the very first time in my life in the moonlight!” We savor these moments for years after! What is happening inside us to create these wordless experiences? The Aesthetic Experience is the interaction of a certain balance of tendencies (or desires) within us that are fulfilled or denied. Too much fulfillment causes boredom. Too much denial causes confusion and misunderstanding. Great art is that which achieves an acceptable balance between fulfillment and denial, across epochs of time. The Aesthetic Experience substantially justifies teaching music education, because music, when taught through the Aesthetic Experience paradigm, affords students unique and valuable experiences beyond all other arts and sciences.
Description: Four elements are involved in the Aesthetic Experience: Art, Subjective Reality, Creative Ability, and Perceptive Ability. (1) Art is all the ways and means that people have contrived to organize materials to produce meanings inherent in the materials and their organization. Great art (such as famous masterpieces in music) is that which achieves an acceptable balance between fulfillment and denial, across epochs of time. (2) Subjective Reality is every part of the human experience inside each human that is touched when the experience cannot be expressed in words. (3) Creative Ability is the ability to manipulate the elements of an art medium to achieve the desired tendencies with their chosen fulfillment or denial. In music, this could be a composer creating, arranging, manipulating, composing, and improvising. (4) Perceptive Ability is the ability to perceive the manipulation of elements to achieve an empathetic response to the tendencies of fulfillment and denial present in a work of art.
Aesthetic Experience Process: How does one explain the Aesthetic Experience process? Here is one example. Mozart, using his Creative Ability through his Subjective Reality while creating Symphony 40, aesthetically interacted with the music elements individually as well as their composite whole. We listen to Symphony 40, using our Perceptive Ability through our Subjective Reality, and we touch Mozart and his Subjective Reality. An artist’s Subjective Reality lives long past his/her life-time. In essence, we can connect with another human and his/her Subjective Reality and therefore be more human!
Teaching for the Aesthetic Experience: An Aesthetic Experience is much like the realm of relationships. One cannot create a relationship for another person, but one can creatively provide many opportunities for relationships to happen. Likewise, one cannot create an aesthetic experience for another person, but one can creatively provide many opportunities for aesthetic experiences. How does one teach for the Aesthetic Experience? It is a very short step from musical perfection into aesthetics. When students achieve a certain level of competency in rhythm and tonal music skills and performance skills, they become free to enter into the feel of music. A music teacher must consciously encourage students to open their hearts to feel music. For example, I’ll never forget the first time students experienced this freedom. A fourth grade class became so artistically focused with playing, singing, and moving an Orff arrangement that they were overcome and awed by the beauty of the music. The performance was so artistic that tears involuntarily ran down my face. I could not stop them. The students were so awed by the experience that they froze in their places in silence at the end. One girl near the front of the class, not daring to break the awe, whispered, “Mr. Knauss, what happened?” The world of art is significant in music education because music educators can greatly increase students' Perceptive Abilities.
Please feel free to contact me at any time, as often as you please, with any mentoring, music teaching, music curriculum, or classroom management questions.
David E. Knauss
Ph.D. in Music Education.
www.classroom-music.info
Dr. Knauss mentors student teachers and regular teachers into teaching excellence. He taught for 3 decades in inner-city public schools, winning over street kids into being like family, became one of the principle curriculum writers for an award-winning, internationally-recognized music department. He retired from public schools, completed a Ph.D. in Music Education, and presently is an adjunct music education professor at Baptist Bible College.
