Philosophy Study, ISSN 2159-5313 December 2013, Vol. 3, No.

12, 1124-1134

DA VID

PUBLISHING

Lived MusicMulti-dimensional Musical Experience: Implications for Music Education

Cecilia Ferm Thorgersen
Lulea University of Technology

Within the field of music education, there is a need of approaching the holistic view of musical experience from different angles. Therefore, the aim of this article is to investigate the phenomenon of multi-dimensional musical experience from a life-world-phenomenological perspective and indicate its benefits to music education. The analysis is informed by Dufrennes philosophical writings regarding the phenomenology of aesthetic experience and also draws on Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, interpreted by Benson and Ford, together with Schutz. These philosophers provide tools for understanding musical experience from a bodily, existential, and sociological perspective, and their complementary ideas about being and learning can be applied to musical experience in the first case and secondly its influences for music educational praxis. Firstly, the concept of lived music is defined through a discussion of dimensions of musical experience; the phenomenology of aesthetic experience; the use of several senses; the heard and the hear-able; apperception; and musical dwelling. Then, the sharing of experience in musical dwelling and its relevance to the concept of imagination is highlighted. I will also emphasize the importance of the view of human beings as holistic bodily subjects. Finally, the article includes a discussion regarding the implications of a life-world-phenomenological view of musical experience to music education. Keywords: Holistic musical experience, musical dwelling, music education

1. Prologue
From the diary of a singer:
Recently, I participated in a small vocal ensemble. A newly created constellation of six people, who had never met before, were about to practice together a few times and then perform Baroque music along with a well-established baroque orchestra in Stockholm. We were all musically educated with a great deal of experience of choir singing but with very little experience of performing baroque music. In the last days before we met, each one of us had striven to learn our parts by reading the music. At the first rehearsal, one of the orchestra members, the cellist, was present. We sat in a circle together with the cellist who was assigned to lead the rehearsal and began to play one of the pieces. After just a few bars he stopped the music and said: Is it OK if I say something about baroque music straight away? The important aspects are rhythm, dynamics, and diction. If we concentrate on doing this together, the timbre will be much better as well. Make the ends of the phrases short and make room for others. Listen to each other, and to me. I might build on something that you do, and vice versa. He really loved to play (in a double sense) this kind of music, and he was playing with us. Let us take just the four bars to get the right feeling. At times, he would jump up, cello in hand, and yell: Did you feel it? That is, you did it together now! During the rehearsal, he also kept stressing that perfect intonation and correct notes were less important: what was important was taking initiative, being daring, and making music together. It was important to be there, to be Cecilia Ferm Thorgersen, Ph.D., Professor in Music Education, Department of Arts, Communication, and Education, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden; main research fields: Aesthetic Communication Based on Phenomenological Philosophy, Music Teacher Education, and Assessment of Music Knowledge. Email: cefe@ltu.se.

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present, to listen, to make and feel the music, to learn and feel the baroque genre, to use our musical knowledge and experience in a new setting, and to come close to a shared sense of when it worked. I could have stayed there forever.

2. Introduction
When interacting in the musical world, we experience and learn to handle form, depth, timbre, pitch, linearity, harmonies, rhythm, and movement in specific genres, contexts or styles (Alerby and Ferm 2005, 177-186; Ford 2010). Aspects of music are not exclusively musical, or artistic, but connected to living in the world in general (Merleau-Ponty 1960/2000). The combination of the aspects, how they sound and how they can be experienced, constitutes music as an aesthetic object. We experience music through our senses on a structural, emotional, tensional, existential, bodily, and acoustic level at the same time (Nielsen 1997; Varky 2009, 33-48). Depending on our directedness or focus of attention, in turn influenced by a variety of forces, some dimensions are foregrounded, and others are in the background. The musical world in which we interact is inter-subjective. In musical experience, we are always intertwined with other human beings through perception, expression, or both. As bodily beings, we try to make the world meaningful and manageable. Musical experience can be seen as every-day, non-obligatory, artistic, and personal ways of being in the world (Ferm Thorgersen 2009, 167-184; Langeveld 1987, 5-10). Hence, musical experience seems to be a complicated multi-dimensional phenomenon, existing in a changing social world, in which people create meaning though interaction. It is a big challenge for music education research to shed light on and offer an understanding of all the dimensions of musical experience. Nevertheless it is necessary to accept the challenge if we want research to contribute to expanding the range of fruitful possibilities for future actions and future decisions (Bowman 2005, 153-168). If educational research in music avoids the existential, bodily, emotional, or aesthetic aspects of musical experience, it will hamper future imaginations of how music education can be organised. We need to approach the holistic view of musical experience from different angles, and this article is my contribution: the aim is to investigate the phenomenon of multi-dimensional musical experience from a life-world-phenomenological perspective and indicate its benefits to music education. In the following, I intend to examine musical experience as a multidimensional phenomenon of being through a life-world-phenomenological perspective. The analysis is informed by Dufrennes (1953/1973; 1954, 401-410) philosophical writings regarding the phenomenology of aesthetic experience and also draws on Merleau-Ponty (1960/2000; 1962; 1968; 2004), Heidegger (1987), interpreted by Benson (2003), and Ford (2010), together with Schutz (1964/1999). These philosophers provide tools for understanding musical experience as a multidimensional phenomenon. Maurice Merleau-Ponty contributes the view of human beings as bodily perceptive and expressive subjects, Martin Heidegger1 represents a more existential approach, and Schutz a more sociological one, and their complementary ideas about being and learning can be applied to musical experience in the first case and secondly its influences for music educational praxis. Firstly, I will define the concept of lived music from a life-world-phenomenological perspective by discussing the dimensions of musical experience, the phenomenology of aesthetic experience, the use of several senses, the heard and the hear-able, apperception and musical dwelling. Then, I will highlight the sharing of experience in musical dwelling and its relevance to the concept of imagination. I will also emphasise the importance of the view of human beings as holistic bodily subjects. Finally, I will discuss the implications of a life-world-phenomenological view of musical experience to music education. Throughout the article, I will

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relate to the introductory anecdote to exemplify different aspects of the phenomenon of musical experience.

3. Lived MusicMusical Dwelling 3.1. Dimensions of Musical Experience

In this article experience is seen as a verb, an active way of being (Ferm Thorgersen 2010, 35; Giorgi 1999, 68-96). Consequently, musical experience demands active subjects: beholders, or receivers, and performers. The introductory musical experience anecdote evokes a scene of people who are singing, listening, interacting, feeling, teaching, learning, sharing, and living. The music is at the centre, between, and at the same within and around, the subjects, who are trying to make and learn music together. The subjects are not outside the music, but inside, closely intertwined with each other and the music. They are not simply learning the structure and optimal performance of the piece they are singing, but they are also feeling that they exist, taking part in the musical setting, and they are touched by the music, the musical activity and the context. Musical experience can never be one-dimensional. As I suggested in the introduction there are several forces influencing what dimensions that fade into the background and what is foregrounded. For example, earlier experiences, openness, and awareness, as well as cultural structures and ideas, determine how the music presents itself and to what extent it can be experienced at several levels at the same time (Ferm Thorgersen 2009). According to Dufrenne, a specific kind of directedness, based on presence and openness, enables music to come across as an aesthetic object. Object, in this text, should not be thought of as a thing, but as a dynamic phenomenon, constituted in historical, social, spatial, and cultural contexts.

3.2. The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience

Intentionality is a basic concept of phenomenology. We are always directed towards something, at the same time as something appears to us. Aesthetic experience and aesthetic objects are inseparable according to Dufrenne (1953/1973). Consequently, the aesthetic object exists thanks to the beholder, and vice versa. An aesthetic object is defined by the perception of it: It can be perceived as an aesthetic object if it presents itself as such to the beholder while the beholder perceives the object as an aesthetic one. A work of art is not automatically an aesthetic object. The work of art is a constant, which exists independently of being experienced by a perceiver. Aesthetically perceived, however, the work of art becomes an aesthetic object. The work of art requires urgently only perception, solicits it imperiously if it is aesthetically valuable (Dufrenne 1954, 404). It is in the other that the work gets its relief, according to Merleau-Ponty (2004). This does not mean that the object has no meaning of its own, as Dufrenne points out, but without the perceiver it only exists as a thing, a possible aesthetic object. The bodily subject and the object are closely connected in a musical setting. The aesthetic object is at the same time in-it-self and for-us. It exists in order to be perceived by us as its spectators, or beholders (Dufrenne 1954). At the same time, it exists in the expression of the expressers or performers, in this case the people who make music. In the introductory anecdote the musical work, created by Buxtehude, is perceived and expressed by the participating subjects and thus made possible to be perceived as an aesthetic object. The beholder knows that she has to equal the object that demands mastery of perception, which in turn can demand practice. It is necessary for us to learn to perceive well, in order to do justice to it (Dufrenne 1954, 407). To be able to the object and to be open for and feel the meaning beyond all language, the subject has to be corporally present to the object, then totally present in the moment of contemplation offered by the object, and

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finally present in a virtual knowledge of the affective meaning which the aesthetic object evokes. For, if the affective quality that informs the object at its very core is not in some sense already known by it, the spectator would be incapable of recognizing it, and would remain indifferent or blind (or death) to the object; in fact certain works are never understood by certain publics (Dufrenne 1954, 407). Merleau-Ponty (2004) makes the same conclusions using the foreign language metaphor, and comparing it to a work of art. If a human being does not know a language very well, she cannot understand the nuances, as she has not made it her own, and does not use it as a tool to understand the world. As regards any language, it is learnt while being developed through the use of it within specific cultures, genres, and styles (Ford 2010; Merleau-Ponty 1953/1973). In perceiving the work, human beings are not concerned with the matter as such, Dufrenne argues, but attention is instead directed towards the works matter insofar as it has been transformed into particular forms constituted by colours, tunes, or sculpted stone. Humans are then no longer concerned with its matter per se, but with what Dufrenne calls the sensuous (le sensible). The sensuous is defined as what the matter becomes when perceived aesthetically, in other words, the being of a sensuous thing is realized only in perception. The aesthetic object can be defined as a coalescence of sensuous elements (Dufrenne 1953/1973, 13). According to Dufrenne, meaning possible to perceive in interaction with an art work is not transcendental, nor nonexistent; it is immanent in the sensuous, being its very organization (Dufrenne 1953/1973, 12). Merlau-Ponty (2004) states that (aesthetic) meaning is constituted where the elements approach each other in the flow of expression; in the gaps between the elements in expression, we combine the elements in conscious ways and create meaning. We perceive our own expression and compare it with our intentions and agreed aesthetic ideas through the sensuous. According to Dufrenne (1953/1973), the subject must be active to complete the aesthetic object through three stages of being, which together allow the perceiver to respond to the depth of the aesthetic objectto its expressed worldthrough feeling, as mentioned above. The three phases are presence, representation and imagination, and finally reflection and feeling. Representation and imagination are activities that demands, presence, and are in turn required to make feelings and reflection possible. All together the three phases are needed to constitute aesthetic experience. The very height of aesthetic perception is found in the feeling which reveals the expressiveness of the work (Dufrenne 1953/1973, 42). This feeling is always someones feeling, as Dufrenne maintains. It is not disembodied or impersonal, but is the expression of the depth of a human subject. The perceiver becomes present in the aesthetic object as well. Through feelings she engages herself in the expressed world. Dufrenne underlines that depth in an aesthetic feeling is to be measured in terms of what it discovers in the object. On the other hand, Dufrenne underlines, the depth of the aesthetic object concerns its ability to surprise and demand habits; to offer new relations to and views of the world. The act of aesthetic experience is in other words an act of reconciliation of the object and the subject, reciprocity of two depths (Dufrenne 1953/1973, 48); the depth of the expressed world and the depth of the beholder of this world. The sensuous is an act common to the person who feels and to what is felt (Dufrenne 1953/1973, 48). The sensitive dimension of the world constitutes its expressed world; and functions as its guiding principle (Yates 2006). Man and world belong to the larger unity of being. It is obvious in the example in the beginning of the text that the participators are present as they use representations and imagination to create a shared picture of the work, and the cellist encouraged feelings and reflections. The cellist has a specific role in the group, which includes both power and responsibility. He shares his experiences and thoughts about Baroque music, but he also creates an environment where all participants are encouraged to take part in the

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three phases of aesthetic experience in the process of making music together. He is open for the expressions of the participants and opens himself as well.

3.3. Several Senses in InterplaySomething More Than Perception

The concept of the sensuous implies that human beings use a combination of senses in aesthetic experience. The sensuous as a way of being where subject and object are mutually dependent on each other supports this view. The aesthetic object is not constituted in the mind of the beholder, but completed through an active and bodily being-together, or birth togethercon-aitre (Merleau-Ponty 1968). The three stages of experience (or being) presence, representation and imagination, reflection and feeling, which are the same irrespective of whether the aesthetic object is music, painting or theatre, make clear that perception is not just about listening, or viewing, but about emotional living. This approach demands the Kantian view that the senses sight and hearing are highest in the hierarchy of perception, which still dominates education and educational activities and principles (Elam 2005). To be able to experience aesthetically in the way that Dufrenne suggests, human beings have to be open in their presence, which in turn makes imagination, reflection and feeling possible. Even Merleau-Ponty (2004) stresses the same idea, and adds the bodily dimension. He thinks that presence, gestures, physiognomies, a feeling that something is going to happen, and an ongoing improvisation, an ongoing trial and error towards improvement, make art true. To be experienced as lived, the art has to touch us from all directions, he continues. Dufrenne (2004) opened up ways of thinking about aesthetic experience; also by underlining that all art forms take place in time and space. The art is not just in front of us, but also around us and within us; we are parts of the art, and make the art possible to be perceived aesthetically (Bowman and Powell 2007). This is clear in the introductory anecdote, I think. The rehearsal makes it possible for the work of Buxtehude to show itself to the singers, who use their imagination, and complete the work through reflection and feelings. The interaction with the music in the inter-subjective context is a way of being. In a longer perspective, the process aims to make the piece of music perceived and experienced aesthetically, by others, the audience.

3.4. UncoveringMaking Possible to Experience Aesthetically

So far the focus has been on the experience of works composed, or created by artists, even if the references to the introduction have implied that perceiving and expression are closely intertwined and inter-dependent. Dufrenne admits that the artist is also closely connected to the world in its musical form, and also to other human beings, but still artists have a different task than the spectators, or beholders. Dufrenne was a product of his time, the 50 seconds, and I believe that if Dufrenne had lived today when creating and uncovering the world is for most people in the Western world, he would have been open to dissolving the differences between artist and spectator. Merleau-Ponty (2004) on the other hand thinks that movement together with perceiving includes the secret of expressive action. Experiences of the world are presented in new combinations; it is all about reclaiming and making a cadence concrete and specific that has been visible in a part of an earlier work, or in a moment of experience. The artist himself is not able to say what comes from him and what comes from the things themselves, what the new piece contributes to the already given, what is his own, and what is someone elses. In other words, the operation of expression can be seen as a kind of temporal eternity. Existing music gives birth to new music through composers caretaking, translation, and transformation of it. To make clear that improvisation and composition not necessarily have to be about making

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something completely new could encourage students, and even music teachers, to dare to discover the musical world more freely. Dufrenne claims that the task of the artist is to uncover, or discover, the phenomena in the world through creating works that can be presented to potential perceivers and made possible to experience aesthetically. Merleau-Ponty talks about making the invisible visible, in our case the unheard hear-able, and that is also what is expected to happen in Langevelds (1983) artistic way of experiencing the world. The visible or the hear-able is not used here in a physiological way, as in Frederick Pios (2007, 121-152) categories of musicality, but rather as capacity to experience aesthetically, as perceiver or creator. Music experienced aesthetically is what Pio defines as the un-heard, a way of being that includes the dimensions that are not directly connected to the acoustics of music. Merleau-Ponty (2004) writes about the unspoken, the quiet parts of a language, or forms of expression, the gaps, the meaning in-betweenor the spiritual vectors of an expression. Expression and perceiving which include those vectors is what I call a multi-dimensional experience of music. Here, perception and expression are valued equally; the artist is also a perceiver, and the beholder influences the musical, and aesthetic object. The experience also takes place in specific contexts to which the subjects bring different earlier experiences, just as in the introductory example.

3.5. Musical Dwelling and Apperception

Benson (2003) offers an interesting view of musical being, based on Heideggers (1987) view of dwelling, which seems to be very close to Merlau-Pontys concept of inhabiting the world. A piece of art can, from this perspective, be seen as offering a place for dwellingor a space in which to dwell (Benson 2003, 31). The author underlines that this place is not just for the artist, but for others as well. Consequently, from a musical perspective, a work of art can be a world where music-making can take place. Performers, listeners, and composers, Benson suggests; dwell in the world music-making creates. The dwelling can best be characterised as improvisation, the Benson continues, including the definition of fabricating what is conveniently at hand, as well as to cultivatingto discover and express at the same time. On this note, he concludes that dwelling transforms the space in which one dwells (Benson 2003, 32). In musical experiences seen as dwelling performers, composers and audience work together with the given to create something new. What is at hand is musical knowledge and capacity for imagination, which in turn are constituted by earlier (musical) experiences, and apperception. In a given context or community, there are specific tools, possibilities, and barriers for musical dwelling. In specific contexts, we constitute the world through interaction. Earlier experiences are made in specific contexts as well, determining potential expression and experience in the present situation. Earlier experiences influence what human beings co-experience in a given situation. Merleau-Ponty (2004) underlines that language in a broad sense, including artistic as well as linguistic expressions, can be used to illustrate what Benson calls dwelling. He says that a living language, as art, does not aim to recreate things itself, but allows perspectives upon things and implies discussions. A language does not contain the ideas, but matrixes for ideas, leading to meanings that we never have paused to consider. Therefore, human beings earlier experiences of things (that show themselves in an experiencing moment), the apperception, become important in musical dwelling. Earlier experiences are demanded when it comes to use art language in seeing or approaching phenomena in the world from new perspectives. Consequently, the earlier experiences of the participants in the Baroque group were important and necessary in creating the work as an aesthetic object, possible to be perceived as such by others. The individual construction of the musical elements made the acoustic and the spiritual come together as a whole, which an

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attempt simply to copy the work of Buxtehude would not have achieved. Dwelling does not take place in a vacuum, as I mentioned in the first part of the text. It happens in an inter-subjective setting similar to the one described in the introduction. The musicians were directed towards each other and to the music, and they arrived with different experiences of music, music making, choir singing, baroque interpretation and so forth. Therefore, the sharing of experience was crucial.

4. Shared Experience and Imagination in the Inter-subjective World

As mentioned before, musical dwelling takes place in specific contexts, communities, or styles in one way or another connected to genres. Different genres imply different ways of expression, communication, and perception, as well as different values (Ferm Thorgersen 2006, 237-250; Schutz 1964/1999). Human beings earlier experiences of style influence expectations of the symbols used in communication and what they represent. Composer, performer, and listener create music together in different ways in different contexts (Benson 2003). The degree of spontaneity of improvisation, the relation between improvisation and composition, the way a piece of music offers a space for musical dwelling and how that dwelling alters the piece itself, present dimensions that are connected to genre, and genre influences human beings expectations and capacity to experience multi-dimensionality. The way a teacher approaches and relates to traditions of a genre varies the possibilities for music making as dwelling. Jazz, Baroque, and Folk music mediate strong traditions that imply, for example, how boundaries between improvisation and composition are defined. Possibilities for dwelling within a genre become obvious through questions like; To what extent is it possible to change the music? What tools can be used and by whom? What melodic or rhythmical patterns are permitted? How do the perceivers expectations of the genre influence the outcome? A task for music education could be to organize teaching that invites participants, both creators and perceivers, to share experiences in ways that both maintain and challenge traditions. Expectations and possible imaginations are constituted by earlier experiences. In sharing the world, structures are constituted, guiding our lives, and continually reconstructed. The world seen as inter-subjective implies that the individual being is closely intertwined with other human beings. As the world consists of things and other human beings, we are also directed towards other human beings at the same time as they show themselves to us, as mentioned earlier. In musical situations we are directed towards others in specific ways depending on our earlier experiences of similar situations, which in turn shape the way we view ourselves, others and what we expect to happen in the situation (Ferm Thorgersen 2009). A precondition for multi-dimensional experience is that we view ourselves as performers and beholders, both when it comes to openness to perceiving and awareness of the ability to express ourselves in a social context. Another precondition is the willingness to share experiences, a kind of express-within-relationship, a process in which we strive to become engaged with both our own whole-person knowing and the whole-person knowing of our fellow musicians (Lyle and Kasl 2002, 176-192). The one and only way to develop knowledge and understanding about the world is through human beings experiences, and consequently sharing of experiences among human beings is crucial for musical multi-dimensional experience. A final precondition is the possibility to be active and interact, since meaning from a phenomenological point of view is shaped through interaction with and in the world. Common experiences create the basis for what is possible to imagine, and what is possible to express (Adams 2001, 203-224; Ferm Thorgersen 2008). Thus, a variety of experience is important for multi-dimensional musical experience in the forms of expression and perception.

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Music as a form of expression has already been compared to and described as language in a broad sense, and language in a broad sense is created in as well as creates a context making inter-subjective meaning production possible (Merleau-Ponty 1960/2000; Alerby and Ferm 2005; Schutz 1964/1999). As bodily subjects, active in musical activities, we share streams of consciousness through common experiences (Schutz 1964/1999). In playing music together, we share both time and space, we communicate through and use several senses, share the music, values, and spirituality. It is also in the sharing of experience, where human express and perceive music, that the combinations of elements, and thereby gaps, are made accessible which make musical meaning-making and aesthetic experience possible. The musical elements are combined by and between the individual musicians. In the meeting, or sharing, between the performers and the composers, and the listener(s) stream of consciousness even more in-betweens or gaps are constituted. The frames of the context, the earlier experiences together with the expectations and imaginations of the involved individuals limit, or make multi-dimensional experience and meaning-making possible.

5. Living BodiesLived ExperienceLived Music

The underlying assumption of this article is that subjects, and human beings, are constituted as living bodies (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Interacting with the world with all our bodily senses makes the world meaningful and manageable. In musical settings we use our whole body in listening, dancing, music-making, composing, and reflecting. Lived body, lived time, lived room, and lived relations become important admittances to the world (Manen 1997). Musical meaning is made through bodily experiences, which have a common ground with others in communication. Music can be seen as a unique way of being in the body, according to Wayne Bowman (2005) It draws together knowing, being and doing as nothing else does (Bowman 2005, 4). Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of the body involves the lived world. As we touch, we are also being touched, and as we act, we are also being acted upon. Perception becomes the process that occurs between my own flesh and the flesh of the object or worldas each both perceive, and are perceived by, the other (Adams 2001, 207). Music and musical instruments are internalised through experience, at the same time as the body is extended. Thereby the ego is immanent in a structural system (Alerby and Ferm 2005, 203-224). Such a way of thinking about musical learning or development puts demands on music education at all educational levels. Teachers need to offer pupils or students interaction with music and musical instruments in active ways. At the same time, the teacher has to encourage reflection, so that the egos being in the structural system becomes conscious, and thereby possible to change. The body is extended, at the same time, as the subject gets opportunity to engage in the musical world, to relate to, or interact with, musical structures and aspects: form, depth, timbre, pitch, linearity, harmonies, rhythm, and movement, in a personal way. Musical elements are combined and experienced in different variations, depending on relations to genre, styles, and traditions. In some cases, the outcomes can be defined as a Chopin inspired piece, a Mozart interpretation, a Beatles groove, or a Stockhausen instrumentation, while in other cases the listener is on her own in the process of categorizing the music, if possible at all. Bowman (2005) underlines the unique potential of (active) musical experience to bring structure and quality together. The lived body is living music here and now, he points out: Music is an embodied practice. We learn the form of expression, all its dimensionsstructural, emotional, tensional, existential, and bodilywhere musical elements are combined through interacting with the world with whole our body (Bowman 2006; Ferm 2006, 237-250).

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Maybe musical dwelling can be seen as a phenomenological body where the participants are inter-related and work together as different organs with complementary skills and actions where all actions involve every participant (Stubley 1998, 93-105). The body is closely connected to the world through the life-worlds of the participants, their experiences, and expectations. The boundaries of the body are changing depending on the directedness of the body. When the vocal ensemble was to sing together with the orchestra, the boundaries of the body had to include both groups of living subjects. New common goals and imaginations had to be settled. Later when also the audience was included in the body, the process evolved and the imagination and meaning of dwelling changed. All participants constituting the new living body had to be present, open and engaged, all participants had to use representation and be imaginative to reach a common expression, all participants were able to connect to their feelings and let reflection connect them to their living in the worldthey were offered, and offered multidimensional musical experience in the rehearsal and performing settings.

6. Lived Music as Education

How can music education offer multi-dimensional musical experience? How can music education become musical dwelling, a way of habit and being in the world? This article has suggested that musical experience requires practice, ways of learning the form of expression by interacting in the musical world. It has also been argued that human beings have to be open to make aesthetical or multi-dimensional experience possible. Thirdly, the importance of the ability to combine musical elements in individual ways in order to create aesthetical objects that can be experienced as such has been stressed. Finally, the inter-subjective world where human beings as bodily subjects are closely intertwined has been defined as a precondition for musical experience as expression and perception. The musical world is socially constituted and offers structures and concepts, which the individual has to relate to in their learning processes. The question is to what extent musical dwelling as education should be controlled, guided, and limited by the structures, and to what extent music education in school should be open to and encourage students own dwelling, and their own organisation based on their earlier experiences and future imaginations regarding music, as well as musical teaching and learning. A possible suggestion is to have Langevelds (1983, 5-10) four forms of experience in mind when offering musical experience in educational settings. First, everyday experience, where students interact with agreed structures, could encourage teachers to consider students everyday musical activities and let these constitute the basis for further learning. One starting point could be to map what traditions, genres and cultures that are represented by the students knowledge and experiences in a class. From that map different ways of treating and combining different musical parameters could be investigated and compared. Second, non-obligatory experienceplaycould give energy to playful activities where students get the opportunity to go into different roles and experience themselves as different musical beings in various unfamiliar and familiar settings. One example could be to focus upon the opera genre. What different musical roles exist there? What themes are common in opera scripts? What specific musical tools are being used? What are the typical characters expected to express in what ways in an opera piece? Through common playful activities, the opera genre could be discovered and hopefully internalized. Third, artistic experience, should underline the importance of letting the students use and develop musical skills in performing and composing activities to make the unheard hear-able. Through more or less steered activities children and youngsters could be offered to improvise and compose music in different genres or styles,

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such as romanticism, hip-hop, new-age, or childrens rhymes. Finally, the fourth form of experience, the personal, should inspire to activities where students get the chance to find their own musical identities. For example, students could be encouraged to reflect upon music that they have been exposed to through their lives in different settings. They could have the chance to explore what musical preferences they have and how these have developed. Additionally they should get the possibility to think about the relations to music they imagine in their future lives. I hope this article provides some openings for further visions of how music education can offer students multi-dimensional musical experiencelived music. I also hope that the message of the text in one way or another will reach teachers, school-leaders, and people who write policy documents and inspire them to cross boundaries when it comes to creating spaces for multi-style musical experiences in educational institutions at all levels, such as ordinary schools, municipal culture schools, NGOs and higher education.

Note
1. For a more thorough discussion of Heideggers thoughts about being and art, based on his later works, see Thorgersen and Schwieler (2013).

Works Cited
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