Reconsidering Aesthetic Experience in Praxial Music Education

In recent discussion, so-called praxial music education has strongly opposed the aesthetic as a guiding concept. According to praxialists, aesthetic object, attitude, and experience—concepts that many music educators may find confusing—cannot be beneficial in organizing and rethinking the realities of contemporary music education. Thomas Regelski has advised music educators to abandon the purport of aesthetic since, instead of capturing the multiplicity of musical practices, it represents a narrow view of music. Aesthetic refers to a directly contemplative, abstract, and intellectual experience.1 Since this contemplative ideal for artistic experience can be traced to a particular historical period in Western thinking, Wayne Bowman argues that there are enough reasons to suspect that a pluralistic music education cannot simultaneously be aesthetic.2 David Elliott is even more categorical: “a truly musical experience is not aesthetic in its nature or value.”3 Instead of being aesthetic, the praxial alternative of these writers suggests that music is a matter of action. It is something that people do for themselves and that the shapes and purposes of this action depend on the particular cultural context.