Perception of life rhythm – aesthetic philosophy in music education

Hanmei Xu[1]

Abstract: As an aesthetic education, music education not only needs to convey the beauty of art, but also is an educational way to convey the beauty of life. Therefore, based on life aesthetics and life connotation of education, the research discusses the life orientation of multi-level music education from multiple perspectives. The research analyzes the life aesthetics of music from three aspects: the limited and the infinite, the cultural existence of the humanistic spirit and the isomorphism of the life state. The discussion on the connotation of educational life starts from three aspects: survival, living and life. On this basis, the research integrates the above two theories and discusses the subjective-communication, cognition and cognitive emotion-experience in music education. Through the basic elaboration of the life vision of music education, it can be found that music education is to help students to pursue a life full of art by helping them develop harmoniously.

Keywords: Music. Education. Aesthetics. Life.

Introduction

In an educator’s eyes, students are lives, which means that education should fully consider the needs of life development. Education should be the way to realize a better lifestyle. Education has a clear essence of life, that is, to understand the educated’s life needs in the growth and development, and help them grow better, so that they can experience the beauty and the art of life, and obtain a poetic life (Orishev; Burkhonov, 2021, p. 139-150). Education contains many elements, such as morality, intelligence, physique and beauty. The essence of value embodied in education is that a living individual can develop freely and comprehensively, which enables one to meet and adapt to changing social requirements.

Aesthetics, as an indispensable part of life, is an important element to help individual life realize soul sublimation. This activity finally points to a kind of life journey, which is the life inheritance of the soul. The purpose of this inheritance is to let each life not only have the ability to survive, but also have the ability to live, so that they can experience the beauty of life, love life, and obtain a life full of interest. As an educational method with aesthetic awareness, the ultimate goal of music education is also to help students realize the development of life with the energy of education. It takes the life inheritance function of education as a bridge and music art as the carrier of life implication, so that students can feel the beauty of life in the beauty of art, which promote them to form an aesthetic concept and harvest a poetic life (Fang, 2021, p. 47-57). Therefore, discussing the life implications of music education is a necessary way to explore its aesthetic philosophy.

1 Related works

Music education, as much talked about aesthetic education, has been explored in depth by many researchers. Dvorak and Hernandez-Ruiz evaluated students’ academic performance in terms of scientific thinking, research skills, personal gains, attitudes and behaviors. The conclusion denoted that the students showed significant improvement in the first three indicators, which suggests that music education contributes to the students’ personal development (Dvorak; Hernandez-Ruiz, 2019, p. 30-60). According to Guo, Su and Yue, the global spiritual and ecological crisis could not be solved without changing the paradigm of music aesthetic education. Contemporary educational methods should be improved by expanding ecological and integrative ways of thinking to elevate the art of music to a new realm with the higher goal of creating sustainable communities of ecologically responsible individuals (Guo; Su; Yue, 2020, p. 564-580). Sabirovna’s survey found that modern students, especially teenage students, have a vague understanding of serious classical art. Before high school, students were interested in any aesthetic activity, but then most of them later lost interest in musical aesthetics (Sabirovna, 2021, p. 112-116).

The above research focused on the problems or specific effects of music education in practice. Many researchers also paid attention to aesthetics in music education. Using John Dewey’s theory of art as a subject of discussion, Tan Xiaoyan examined the connection between art and life, explored the mediating role of culture in it and explained the importance of multiculturalism in music education (Tan, 2020, p. 69-87). Nick Nave argued that democracy in music education has not been adequately represented, and the development of the relevant concepts has been mainly at the theoretical level, with insufficient reflection of democratic ideas and actions in the implementation (Niknafs, 2021, p. 174-193). From the perspective of music anthropology, Han proposed that music is a practice of human diversity and music education is closely related to students’ life experience (Han Ying, 2019, p. 536-539). Goode-Perkins focused on the application of social justice theory and practice concepts to inequalities in music education in the United States. He argued that cultural relevance and responsiveness can be expanded to further equalize music education in the United States (Good-Perkins, 2021, p. 47-66).

To sum up, in past research related to music education, researchers mainly focused on the practice of music education and the educational methods of integrating various philosophical ideas and music education. Few studies have paid attention to the aesthetic characteristics of music education itself, especially the life aesthetics in music education, and have not explored the practical mode of this philosophy. Therefore, starting from this aspect, the research discusses the life aesthetics of music education and the related practice methods on the basis of studying the life aesthetics of music and the life connotation of education.

2 Life connotation in music and education

2.1 Aesthetics of music - art and life connotation

The essence of music beauty is the life connotation of music as an art. It is because of this feature that the educated can obtain emotional nourishment and spiritual washing in specific music practices. The aesthetic appreciation of music can be analyzed from three aspects: the infinite spirit of limited life, the artistry of humanistic spirit and the artistic isomorphism of life (White, 2021, p. 899-915).

The first is the infinite spirit of limited life. In the long historical practice, mankind has created music art to express the beauty of life. Human beings use the beauty of music to feel life. Life, ideals and nature are all life-related elements in music (Shevchenko et al., 2021, p. 185-200). Music explains the secret of life and the world with its unique beauty. Music makes use of the hints of life consciousness to show the limitation of life and the mankind’s transcendence as free spirits to the limited life. Life is finite and music gives people the opportunity to realize the infinite in the world of artistic beauty, which is a special way for their spirit to appreciate life in this infinite world (Boruta, 2023, p. 115-127). Music allows people to experience and taste life, feel the flow of life in the flow of music and connect with the times. Music is one-dimensional, but it shows a dynamic rhythm in space. The meaning of music is extensive. In one-dimensional time and infinite space, music shows the evolution of life incisively and vividly. Music endows life with the realm of “harmony between man and nature” that transcends the soul, so that people can perceive the creation and evolution rules of everything, and then sublimate the individual soul.

The second is the artistry of the humanistic spirit. Human beings have created a colorful art world based on their desire for beauty (Fang, 2021, p. 47-57). Therefore, the music system is used to express the meaning of life, which is a kind of existence rich in humanistic spirit. These characteristics are the laws and principles of human evolution. In the mankind’s historical process, music as a kind of art is not only a carrier of humanistic spirit, but also represents the self-knowledge of continuous progress in the mankind’s cultural inheritance, from generation to generation, and the pursuit and care of human dignity and life (Adams et al., 2019, p. 260-275). Therefore, music has become a cultural existence because of its rich humanistic spirit. It not only expresses the natural laws of human life and the universe, but also combines human life with art, which makes people realize the expression of life aesthetics in music. Culture not only breeds human civilization, but also has been a means to show human self-life in history. The expression of this consciousness is the existence of music culture in the tension structure and cultural behavior of human life.

Finally, it is the artistic isomorphism of life. Life shows the characteristics of the organism, and also has the characteristics of the movement. The organism in this movement combines the natural movement of the body with the invisible movement of the soul (Fossa et al. 2020, p. 229-246). Art is an invisible movement like life. It expresses the dynamic life and shows the rich activities of spirit through emotional expression. It also lets people see the deepest and richest rhythm of the human soul, which is the dynamic process of people’s inner life.

The principle of continuity of rhythm is the basis of living things, which endows life with permanent characteristics. The movement of life is a rhythmic movement like music. Life has its ups and downs, just like the melodious movement of music expressing rich meaning. The reason why human beings become the main carrier of all things in the world is the complexity of human life. By perceiving various movement patterns of life in music, people can feel the rhythm of life. Under the influence of aesthetic perception, life forms a connection with one’s emotions during the interaction between music and the mind, creating a special sense of beauty (Gage et al., 2020, p. 19-36). Therefore, music takes the connection between human psychology and emotion as a bridge. Through spiritual communication consistent with the rhythm of life, it can affect the listeners’ minds, immerse people in the beauty of music and express their feelings heartily.

2.2 The essence of life in education

Education is a form of social practice existing in biological systems, especially for human beings. People need to carry out life, psychology and practice in their own development and life, and the first activity is the premise of the latter two. Practice is also the driving force for the development of human life. Education is very important to the development of it. Education also becomes the purpose and power of existence and development. Therefore, education has become human beings’ one of the most urgent needs to improve their lives.

In education, life manifests itself in three levels: survival, living and life. Educating students from these three levels can enable them to develop in a comprehensive and harmonious way. The material nature of life enables people to solve survival problems by acquiring relevant skills (Drigas; Mitsea, 2020, p. 162-178). People’s active learning enables them to learn through practice and helps them continue to use this learning ability in their future life development. From teaching by precept and example to systematic school education, the development of education history shows that it is the process of teaching people survival skills through teaching activities. In addition, the profound cultural accumulation in history has also been developed and disseminated through education.

Both humans and animals are living individuals in nature, and they need to face primary survival problems. But practice distinguishes humans from animals. The inheritance of human life, which takes education as the priority, has given impetus to human social practice and cultural development. Therefore, the nature of education enables people to communicate with others and the natural environment. Human beings realize the transfer of their basic survival skills through education.

The various practices of life in society have enabled mankind to have thousands of years of cultural accumulation. Life, as a kind of socialized existence, also urges people to approach a more noble life essence gradually in the pursuit of life, and this pursuit also reflects people’s quest for life. After meeting the basic needs of life, people’s needs for natural materials enable them to expand the width of life and increase the thickness of life with their creativity.

The social groups’ development has also led people to begin to pursue moral and aesthetic needs, which focus on the difference between human beings and animals. People will think about life on the spiritual and moral levels and release unlimited power in their limited life. Therefore, the noble spirit shows the essence of education in the millennium cultural heritage. The soul that transcends life often takes education as an opportunity to reflect on how individuals feel and realize the value of life and obtains the transcendence of material life on the basis of current material life, which is a correct understanding of their subjective life. Therefore, education not only provides life with the skills necessary for survival, but also endows subjective life with the initiative to pursue the value of life. It can obtain energy beyond material life itself to meet its natural pursuit of the value of life.

From the three aspects of life existence, biological activity and life, human life is the combination of material life and value life. One exists as a material life and therefore has reality. The reality and value of human life are conscious, dynamic and, constantly, seeking their own life value, which is the unity of what should be (Breslauer, 2019, p. 675-686). The people’s uncertainty and the need for continuous development of life urge people to improve themselves and gain advantages through education. People continue to practice in nature and society. In addition to helping the educated master the existing knowledge, education also provides them with the idea and ability to continuously exceed their own life limit, helping them to achieve continuous progress in the complete life process. Education should show the essence of life, and should take exploring and improving life as the fundamental purpose.

Due to the uniqueness of human development, human beings have become complex kinds of creatures with both reality and what ought to be. The education is also a process to guide people to gain growth and transcend life through a developing, subjective and dynamic lifestyle. Education enables people to explore the meaning of life in the limited real life at present and in the future, realize the necessity and pursuit and transcendence of the ideal value of life. Human beings are also making progress in this process.

As a tool of human inheritance, education must confirm that the students receiving an education are independent beings. Education is also the learning and inheritance of knowledge and skills, and in this process, it promotes the development and continuation of life. Life education recognizes the change of the core of tool education and expresses the essence of life education. Education should reflect the essence of life and take understanding life and even surpassing life as the fundamental purpose of education.

3 Exploration of teaching based on musical emotional expression -- based on Susanne Langer’s music aesthetics theory

In human society, there is a kind of emotion that is independent of individuals. It is not only the people’s specific emotion, but also the abstract of these general emotions. Langer believed that human emotions will change from a specific existence to a general existence, and she also believed that this will go through a very complicated process. Humans can understand objective emotion by acquiring this universal one, and using this universal emotion in specific music art practice (Donato, 2020, p. 101-120).

Music art expresses the complete process of birth, development and disappearance of emotion, life and other subjective experiences in the objective world. It contains the individuality, unity and complexity of the human spirit. They together constitute the connotation of the musical art form. The art of music is highly emotional, soft but intense, which expresses the human beings’ universal emotional significance in life. The nature and structure of emotion can be easily presented by music. Music expresses the essence of human emotions, and personal emotions can only be used as a tool to understand universal emotions. Langer believed that music can also express feelings and emotions that people have never felt before, a passion that people have never even experienced. It has the same theme as self-expression. In some cases, it can even use unique symbols of facial signs to reflect itself (Brentari, 2019, p. 143-161).

However, there are still some differences between such symbols and the general view of art, because these symbols show a formal feature. Although Langer emphasized the universal emotions mentioned above in her music art theory, she did not completely deny that musicians’ personal emotions would have a promoting effect in the process of creating music works with personal emotional characteristics. Because personal subjective feelings can be used as a bridge to express general emotions in music works. Therefore, musicians can ensure that the artistic mood of their works is consistent with this general mood in their creation, can understand this general feeling through their own sensory experience and can even use their own objective emotional materials in music works. But this kind of emotion must be representative and formal. There is always a psychological distance between general emotional feelings and subjective ones. The real personal emotion, reflected in the music works, has become a kind of illusory universal emotion, that is, what these contents convey to people is not a relevant signal, but a symbolic form (Letley, 2019, p. 661-663).

In making music, musicians often use objective and realistic emotions as basic materials, and abstract these materials to obtain a specific emotional concept. The concept obtained in this process is an objective emotional experience that is well known to the public, and it is an expression symbol with specific emotional meanings. Langer elaborated on a clear thinking path, that is, the passage of time reflected in music is the passage of time that human beings constantly experience in real life. They face this passage directly, feel the general mood from it and then reflect it in the music. In this process, an abstract symbol is needed to express the concept of emotion, which needs to be received by people through hearing, and it must also have universal emotional significance. Because it has both practical significance and abstract form, it can be said that it originates from the objective reality but exceeds it. In this context, form has meaning and represents the human beings’ universal emotional mode.

When Langer talked about the life form of art, she did not stop at the visible and hearable artistic phenomenon, but combined the concepts of psychology and physiology, so that they can jointly reveal the essence and profound concept of music art. On this basis, she also used it as a tool to study the meaning of the human soul (Hassenstein et al. 2020, p. 404-414). Langer believed that life has a feeling function. Only when the intuition based on feeling detects that there is a certain correspondence between the observed objects, a certain general emotion can be generated, which reflects the consistency between objective reality and subjective experience. If one wants to create a symbol to express this consistency and arouse human aesthetic perception, it must present itself as a projection or symbol of life activities. The logical form of this symbol is similar to the basic logical form of life.

From this point of view, it is completely reasonable for people to recognize and perceive inner life activities through the musical art form. All aspects of life can be expressed in the form of musical art. Compared with other arts, music can show vivid phenomena more concretely. Therefore, music education, rich in life implications, needs to start from the perspective of emotional experience. Music is an art of emotion, which infects human beings through this emotion. It requires people to contact specific music images through their own emotional connection, so that educators and the educated can have spiritual resonance with music creators in the experience process.

As a kind of aesthetic education, the most important thing about music education is that it has the educational function of aesthetic emotion, which enables music art to instill healthy aesthetic emotion into students through its own appeal, and promotes them to form perfect and sound aesthetic characteristics. The reason why music has such special characteristics is that the profound influence of music art on people’s souls makes people feel the same emotion as music creators when they create music works of art. This emotional experience can enable people to obtain the highest pleasure experience in physiology and psychology, emotion and soul. Experience is the process of helping people meet the creators of art in music. The music art appreciator can feel the aesthetic feeling with life characteristics contained in the works through such experience, which can be derived from the creator’s own endowments to the works, the appreciator’s own practical experience of the works, the aesthetic appreciation of music art and even the unique meaning of life.

Therefore, the essence of music education is the perceiving the emotion of music works. Similarly, the emotional education of music education must help students experience the existence of life in works of art, whether they are creators or viewers. It is an independent and conscious emotional activity under the condition of sufficient subjectivity. Of course, it is not just a perceptual educational activity. In the process of inserting the rationality of the aesthetic order into perceptual music education, the rules and guidelines presented by rational aesthetics awaken people’s rational consciousness and promote them to form a beautiful outlook on life in the interweaving of rationality and sensibility. The psychological desire of those who have received such music education and morality, based on kindness, can be integrated, that is, the acquisition of truth, kindness and beauty.

Therefore, the emotional perception experience of music education plays a role in the free communication of subjective consciousness. Through the aesthetic consciousness of music, it can return to and realize the authenticity of music education. Students can feel the beauty contained in music art through music education, create a unique aesthetic mood by associating and feeling the meaning of life, and transform the freedom of the soul into an objective society’s moralization. Teachers should guide students to enter the aesthetic mood of specific music situations, through the cultivation and influence of a pure music environment, and use the emotional education bridge, contained in music art, to guide students to think about the true meaning of life.

Conclusion

The ultimate goal of music education is to enrich people’s lives. In this regard, the life connotation of music education always plays an important role in enabling students to understand the meaning of life under the influence of the beauty of music. The process of music education is mainly embodied in the following three laws that characterize “life”: subjectivity-communication, cognitive and emotional perception-experience. In terms of subjectivity-communication, it is, first of all, a communicative activity between educators and students. Secondly, it is a communicative activity between the educator of the curriculum, the educated and the objective world, which is reflected in the musical works, as well as in the acquisition of basic musical knowledge and abilities, and in the unique social culture of musical art, which is revealed through subjective aesthetic perception.

Emotional perception-experience is the core of music education. Students can independently and freely construct their perceptions and experiences of the beauty of music through emotional attunement. This stimulates students’ inner emotional responses and helps them to develop a certain value system. Music education systematically translates this value system into aesthetic life values for students to live an active and healthy life. This conclusion highlights the theme of the study, which is how music education perceives the rhythm of life through aesthetic philosophy, clarifies the essence and goals of music education, and makes clear its important role in developing students’ aesthetic values.

Percepción del ritmo de vida -- filosofía estética en la educación musical

Resumen: Como educación estética, la educación musical no sólo necesita transmitir la belleza del arte, sino que también es una forma educativa de transmitir la belleza de la vida. Por lo tanto, con base en la estética de la vida y la connotación de la vida de la educación, la investigación discute la orientación de la vida de la educación musical de varios niveles desde múltiples perspectivas. La investigación analiza la estética vital de la música desde tres aspectos: lo limitado y lo infinito, la existencia cultural del espíritu humanista y el isomorfismo del estado de vida. La discusión sobre la connotación de la vida educativa parte de tres aspectos: sobrevivencia, vivir y vivir. Sobre esta base, la investigación integra las dos teorías anteriores y discute la experiencia subjetiva-comunicación, cogniy emoción cognitiva en la educación musical. A través de la elaboración básica de la visión de vida de la educación musical, se puede encontrar que la educación musical es ayudar a los estudiantes a seguir una vida llena de arte, ayudándoles a desarrollarse armoniosamente.

Palabras clave: Música. Educación. Estética. Vida.

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Received: 17/02/2023 - Approved: 27/04/2023 - Published: 10/01/2024

Notes

[←1]

Dance Academy, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, 610101 – China. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9372-2856. Hanmei00Xu@outlook.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Related works

2 Life connotation in music and education

2.1 Aesthetics of music - art and life connotation

2.2 The essence of life in education

3 Exploration of teaching based on musical emotional expression -- based on Susanne Langer’s music aesthetics theory

Conclusion