Brief Introduction to the Role of Music Education in University
Student's Artistic Cultivation
Yiru Wang , Rong Zhang and Hua Sun
Xingtai University, Xingtai, Hebei, 054001, China
Keywords: Music education, artistic cultivation, role.
Abstract: Many universities are paying more attention to students' artistic cultivation, which is essential for their
personality formation. Music education is a vital part of artistic cultivation in university. It will help
university students to improve their culture awareness, mind, outlook on life and physical, mental
development. Therefore, promotion of university music education is of great significance for students'
artistic cultivation. This research introduces the influence of university music education on students' artistic
cultivation in various aspects, letting more people know the importance of university music education.
1 INTRODUCTION
In recent years, with the constantly decreasing
threshold to enter a university, university students
are very different in ideological quality. Thus,
university students become the focal point of people
among many social problems. Besides, as the main
body to spread foreign ideas, university students are
easy to be influenced by radical thoughts and act
irrationally. Faced with these problems, universities
should consider seriously on how to help students
receive new thoughts and resist vulgar thoughts
simultaneously (Yang Yongguo, 2011). In addition,
universities can also guide them to learn new
thoughts to improve their personal charm. These
problems should be solved in priority in university
education. Music education, an essential part of
quality education, helps students improve their
ideology and values. It is of great importance to the
artistic cultivation of university students.
2 ANALYSIS OF MUSIC’S
UNIQUE CHARM
In the era of further promoting reform and opening
up, the integration of different culture gives birth to
more diversified values. These new values have a
strong impact on people's traditional moral concept
and daily lifestyle. Changes in mind are the basic of
action. At the sensitive stage of reform and opening
up, government is more responsible for helping
people build correct values, which can stabilize
social order and create harmonious society. Thus,
the development goals can be achieved. University
days are an essential period for students to build
their values and outlook on life (Li Xiaoyu, 2012).
The improvement of comprehensive quality and
artistic quality is the main task to transform social
concepts. The understanding of university music
begins with the analysis on music’s unique charm.
Firstly, students need to know the definition of
music. Music is a way for people to express their
inner feelings and also the carrier of their emotions.
There are many forms of music expressions,
including singing, playing, listening, etc.
Nonetheless, music has inextricable connections
with people’s emotions despite its style, expression
or tone. People express their feelings through music
and recognize the power of culture and morality,
which is the charm of music.
Secondly, music is often referred as art, with
underestimated status in the five-thousand-year
Chinese culture. Music has certain national
character, regularity and sociality. National music
enlightens people's national emotions and creativity
in the continuous inheritance. Moreover, it also
imperceptibly improves national civilization and
cultural connotation. Therefore, developing
countries should learn from the developed ones,
transforming from simple cultivation of artistic
professionals to the development of artistic
achievement in the entire nation (Zhang Tuanyan,
2012). Such music education is more practical and
meaningful.
221
Sun H., Wang Y. and Zhang R.
Brief Introduction to the Role of Music Education in University Student’s Artistic Cultivation.
DOI: 10.5220/0006447602210224
In ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV (ISME 2016), pages 221-224
ISBN: 978-989-758-208-0
Copyright
c
 2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
221

Thirdly, the essence of music is to make people
happy. Therefore, people are willing to gain
happiness through expressing their feelings by
music. As a kind of art, music brings people artistic
enjoyment and awakens people's values and morality
to enjoy the best experience in the future.
3 ROLES OF MUSIC
EDUCATION IN STUDENTS'
ARTISTIC CULTIVATION
3.1 Influence of music education on
university students' value and
outlook on life
Music education is an important method to improve
university students' comprehensive quality and
artistic cultivation. University period is essential for
students to build their value and outlook on life, and
also easy to be influenced by the vulgar thoughts
from outside world. Enough attention should be paid
to this period. An outstanding music work always
has rich and philosophic contents such as eulogizing
good morality and history, encouraging people to be
positive and enthusiastic. The messages in music
works will help university students to build their
own values. Through appreciating these music
works, students can build correct ideology, outlook
on life, patriotism and mature view on the ugly
scene of the society. Thus, they can live through
their university and future life smoothly without
going to extremes in mentality or behavior.
3.2 Improvement of university
students' aesthetic quality
Aesthetic quality is an essential part in university
students' artistic cultivation. Students should first be
able to appreciate beauty. Only after this can they
discover beauty and then improve their artistic
cultivation. It helps to establish their value and
outlook on life. Therefore, cultivation of music
education will have great influence on students'
aesthetic quality to some extent. Through education
on traditional songs, musical instruments,
performances and music, students could understand
the emotional experiences contained in music.
What's more, it also enables students to recognize
themselves and the beauty of music, so they can
enjoy their lives and find the beauty of life. Music
education, in fact, is a consciously aesthetic
education. Under the great academic and
employment pressure, university students are easily
tired. However, music can handle these problems
directly. They can know the truth of life, as well as
the definite meaning of the good, the beauty and the
truth from music. This would help them to
distinguish good things from bad ones rather than
being influenced by emotional feelings, thus solving
problems rationally and effectively. Moreover, they
won't lose themselves in vulgar lifestyles with the
help of music.
3.3 Cultivation of university students'
innovative thoughts
Music, one of the three keys to enlighten people, is
vital to develop university students' artistic
cultivation and innovative thoughts. It is an
important aspect to help university students to better
recognize and distinguish music, and find the
difference and connections between music works.
Such education could imperceptibly improve
students' sensitivity, logical capacity and
imagination, thus broadening their artistic horizons.
People's creativity and logical thinking develops
simultaneously. It has been proved that the
improvement of creativity originates from artistic
cultivation. The improvement of artistic cultivation
can be evaluated by improvement of aesthetic level
and logical thinking. Under such circumstance,
people's creativity can be motivated to the greatest
extent. People have faced countless clashes between
science and art, as well as perfect combination of
logical thinking and artistic thinking in history.
Thus, people should realize the importance of
university students' artistic cultivation to the
development of themselves and the entire society.
3.4 Improvement of university
students' interpersonal skills and
self-confidence
University is an essential period in life. Students are
easy to lose themselves at the beginning of the four
years, especially when facing all sorts of
schoolmates. Many students would lose confidence
through comparison due to the lack of
communication, thus affecting their interpersonal
communication. Interpersonal skill can be
influenced imperceptibly with the improvement of
artistic cultivation. The improvement would help
students to find themselves and have a clearing
understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, so
as to improve their interpersonal skills. Music
education plays an important role in improving
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students' self-confidence. Excellent music education
can improve their appreciation and aesthetic ability
of music, and show themselves in different
activities. They can fully recognize their values and
improve their self-confidence and team-work spirit.
This would lay a solid foundation for them to enter
the society, achieving a health life in the future for
their dreams.
3.5 Benefits for physical and mental
development of university students
With the development of economy and the
increasingly fierce competition, university students
are faced with more pressure in finding jobs.
Confusion to the unknown future is a major barrier
in mental development of university students and a
major cause of their psychological problems.
Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the
psychological health education for university
students. Music education is an effective
psychological education method. With unique
charm, diversified expressions and emotional
experiences, music can deeply and directly touch
people's heart. These characters are attracting a large
amount of university students to focus on music and
know about music. Music with different contents
provides people with different visual and listening
enjoyment. In music education, they should be
guided to pay more attention to inspiring music
works. They should also learn to appreciate and
understand music, so as to have a clear
understanding of themselves. Thus, they would
resonate with the music and alleviate their life and
study pressure, which facilitates their mental
development. It is not only universities'
responsibility to help students develop healthily both
mentally and physically. The entire society should
also show their care, respect and understanding to
university students. Thus, students would have more
space to give full play to their talents.
4 IMPORTANT WAYS TO
STRENGTHEN MUSIC
EDUCATION OF UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS
4.1 Emphasis on traditional music
education
During the music education, university students
should be encouraged to know more about
international reputed music works or those
characterized by Chinese culture and antique charm,
rather than pop music. With the development of
society, music works with Chinese characteristics
have gradually vanished in people's lives. However,
such music is necessary in artistic cultivation of
university students. It also provides opportunities for
the inheritance of Chinese classical music. Chinese
classical music is constantly renewed in its long
history. As a representative of the change and
development of Chinese culture over centuries, it is
an important material for constituting the
development of China. Mastery of classical music is
helpful for students' artistic cultivation, patriotism
and further development. Besides, students should
also know some international famous musical
compositions, including works of Beethoven and
Bach. Therefore, they can increase their knowledge
and cultural connotations, which are essential parts
of artistic cultivation. Hence, we should combine
Chinese classical music with foreign music in music
education. In this way, we can protect our traditional
music culture and gain more profound
comprehension in music. What's more, it can help
the university students know and develop
themselves.
4.2 Music thought discrimination on
students
With the implement of reform and opening-up
policy, Chinese economy has boomed and the
people become more open-minded. The openness is
directly reflected in music. It leads to that good and
bad musical works are intermingled, and quite a few
musical works deliver negative and anti-nationalism
thoughts. Confronting with such complex
circumstances, university students should have more
obligations to distinguish the different thoughts in
music, and consciously resist negative music. With
respect to music education, more time and efforts
should be made to help students identify and
appreciate good music in true sense. We should try
our best to free them from negative emotions and
keep them fit both physically and psychologically,
so as to increase their ability to stand pressure. Thus,
they can quickly adapt to the society and advance
their artistic cultivation through music.
4.3 Positive role of various music
associations in university
Life in university is colorful. Different kinds of
association activities play a major role in university
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students' lives, which are important ways for
students to recognize and enter the society. In music
education, universities should adopt other beneficial
assistance besides normal course teaching. Music
associations generally include chorus, dance clubs,
music and drama clubs. In these associations,
students can know more people and practice their
communication skills, organization capability and
their ability to distinguish between the right and
wrong, promoting ideological maturity. All these are
essential for them to improve their self-cultivation.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Emphasis on music education is a staged success of
university education reform. More attention to the
artistic cultivation is an important measure to
improve student’s physical and mental development.
University music education has an important
influence on students' artistic cultivation. It would
help improve their aesthetic quality, self-confidence,
interpersonal skills, logical thinking, sensitivity and
creativity. All these can make university students
adapt to the fierce social competitions more quickly
and promote their physical and mental development.
With a complicated campus and social environment,
all sorts of possible ways should be adopted in music
education, such as the student associations. The
associations are more likely to give full play to
students’ talent and increase their ability to
distinguish good things from bad, thus promoting
their mental maturity and artistic cultivation. To
conclude, music education in university plays an
important role in students' artistic cultivation and
benefits their future developments. Therefore, not
only music education is an essential part in
university education reform, but also it benefits the
socialist spiritual civilization.
REFERENCES
Li Xiaoyu. On the Role of Music Education in the
Improvement of Students’ Comprehensive Quality.
2012(8):48-48.
Yang Yongguo. Role of Music Education in Normal
University to Students’ Comprehensive Quality
Cultivation. 2011(14):56-57.
Zhang Tuanyan. On the Role of Music Education in
University to Students’ Artistic Cultivation.
2012(14):56-57.
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