Aesthetic and religious awareness among pupils: similarities and differences

Abstract

This article explores the opportunities that the aesthetic experience of music offers pupils in their developing awareness of the subjective self and its relation to the objective universe of which it is a part. How does creatively produced music, having challenged the local frameworks or ‘conceptual spaces’ within which it is defined, remain intelligible to its audience? It is suggested that a principle of intelligibility that transcends this formally defining framework rests on a direct and unified perception of affective, subjective reality, shared by human beings; a perception that embraces both composer, performer and listener. This realisation is developed through the relationship that we have, as subjective individuals, to the objective universe of which we are a part. Aesthetic experience gives rise to a sense of transcendent reality, within which the subjective individual and objective world are unified, and which is identified as a central element in our sense of the reality of God.