| This research examined the relationship of the arts and of the amateur in adult education, areas largely unexplored in the field. The purpose of the study was to describe the experience of adult amateur musicians as they pursue their passion of playing chamber music, and to understand the importance and meaning of this activity in their lives. Two chapters describe in the voices of the participants their communication process and their aesthetic response, and are set in the context of a playing session, immersing the reader directly in the experience.;The methods used were existential and heuristic phenomenology and grounded theory. I held in-depth semi-structured interviews with four members of an intact string quartet, videotaped them playing and interviewed them in a focus group setting to get their reactions to the videotape. I also collected data as a participant and an observer of this group of which I am a frequent member. I thus was able to develop a rich narrative description of the ways in which amateur musicians experience playing music together, conveying an authentic sense of what the experience feels like.;The study found that playing chamber music allows the musicians to express their identity in a non-verbal conversation that produces a pleasurable sound and engages all their faculties in a state of deep concentration often approaching transcendence, resulting in an aesthetic response. I explored the musicians' experience in the context of Dewey's philosophy of different levels of experience, including ordinary, educative and aesthetic, the latter of which Dewey considered the highest form of experience. The musicians' conscious experience of enjoyment is accompanied by a less conscious learning process involving perceptual, emotional, intuitive and kinesthetic development and pattern comprehension as well as a sense of deep fulfillment derived from sustained attention. These alternative modes of understanding are key on the assumption that learners create their own knowledge and meaning.;These processes also engage imagination and creativity, the ability to see and understand things in new and unique ways. The study concluded by arguing that aesthetic experience is central to adult education and learning. |
