Music and Development of Creative Personality Within Higher Education Environment . Aesthetic and Semiotic Approach

The article presents the results of the study confirming effectiveness of psychological support of creative personality development by means of music from the perspective of a new aesthetic-semiotic approach. The author proves that musical education determines development of creative personality. In addition to the above music is understood as a complex psychosemantic text, polysemantic and with a lot of different meanings. The study is centered around the use of classical music masterpieces performed "live" in psychological work. Basing on the analysis of researches the author developed a psychological mechanism for creative personality development by means of music, consisting of a system of interrelated conditions. The author describes types, methods, techniques aimed to develop musical creative personality with due account for specifics of modern educational environment of the university, based on the presented psychological mechanism. In the course of ascertaining experiment the following tasks were solved: 1) determine the level of musical and creative development of students from experimental and control groups; 2) identify characteristics of musical and creative development of University students. Results of the formative experiment showed that the implementation of a special educational program in the educational process significantly accelerates development of musicality and creativity of an individual and strengthens internal relationship of those characteristics (p<0. 01). A distinctive feature of the musical and semantic model of psychological support of creative personality development by means of music is that it can be applied at any stage of education in any educational institution.


Introduction
Global and local challenges and complexity of scenarios for the future require strengthening of the interdisciplinary approach and the relationship of environmental, economic, socio-cultural aspects in the education sector.This problem is particularly relevant at the stage of higher education.
Modern labor market changes very quickly and careers for which students are studying today may be in low demand tomorrow.Hence the urgent need for a future professional to rearrange, reorient himself quickly, to adjust to changes in the labor market.
The current situation in Russia, major changes in the socio-political, economic and cultural life of the country makes actual the issue of higher professional education reform.Professional training is a priority while cultural and intellectual development of the student, an important component of higher education, often gets overlooked (Ponomarenko, 2004;Ryzhov, 2012;Terelyanskaya, Kurysheva, 2012;Vorobyeva, etc. al., 2014).
The highlighted aspects of the problem of supporting decent higher education are determining the relevance of development of new approaches to psychological support of creative development of students, fostering the culture of personality through engaging a person to the general culture.Figurnovskaya (1997) analyzes the impact of humanities training on development of creativity and intelligence of an individual in the context of prospects for improvement and development of elite education.She argues that elite education can be used for improvement of general culture of children and young people, their intellectual development.
The concepts of "elite education", "elite university", "elite school", etc. have recently been used quite often in the modern academic literature.In our study, the term "elite" will mean people with personal dignity, rich internal culture.By "elite" education we mean education of high quality.The main goal of elite education is to form in an individual the base of elite consciousness.The final product of the elite education is an individual with broad educational background, ready for active creative work, bearer of elite consciousness capable to be leader in his or her field.Professor of an elite educational institution is a creative person actively participating in scientific inquiry in the problematic field of the subject that is being taught; in a constant process of self improvement and self-education; using completely new teaching methods (Ashin, Berezhnova, Karabushhenko, 1998; Dobrynina, Kuhtevich, 1996; Kurysheva, 2011 b; Figurnovskaya, 1997 etc. ).
Orienting educational process towards elitism as the principle makes manager, teacher and student think and act according to this principle.By psychologically including themselves to this category, all actors of the educational process have already subconsciously begin constructing special educational system.Elitarization of an educational institution begins with psychological and intellectual levels, and only then takes shape in material and technical base.

The Objectives
Detected contradictions helped to identify and formulate the problem of the study that lies in search for ways of comprehensive solution of problems of creative person development in educational process, in determination of the most optimal conditions for it.The solution of this problem is related to development of scientifically grounded content of psychological support of musical and creative personal development of a student based on use of music formative potential.
The purpose of the study: develop a concept for creative personality development by means of music and verify it in the course of experimental work.

The objectives of the study were:
to carry out a systematic analysis of the problem of creative personality development in contemporary educational psychology and to develop conceptual basis for studying and optimizing musical and creative personal development of a student; to substantiate the nature and highlight structural and substantive components of the secondary musical personality as a result of music education; to develop and test theoretical model of psychological support of creative personal development by means of music and evaluate its effectiveness; within the theoretical model, to develop evaluation criteria and levels of musical and creative development of personality in relation to high school education; to identify and provide a theoretical basis for psycho-pedagogical factors, conditions and mechanisms of creative development of personality in the process of music education; determine the structure of musical creative developmental environment; to develop and test a program of psychological support of musical and creative personality development.
However, theoretical analysis of academic and academic-methodical literature and monitoring of processes in fields of musical expression and music education allowed us to document main contradictions related to the whole system of psychological provision of creative personal development by means of music in the educational process and requiring a solution (Lazutina, 2009;Seashore, 1990;Toropova, 2008 etc. ).
The main contradiction lies in the fact that theoretical studies of music emphasize its significance for society, for the individual, accentuate the outstanding role it plays in culture.At the same time, ways in which music functions in culture and educations, processes of formation of socially meaningful ideals by the art of music remain unclear.
The most effective approach to form prospects for musical and creative, aesthetic and spiritual development of students is the new aesthetic-semiotic approach (Kurysheva, 2011 a), which is described in the study as a specific form of interconnection, convergence of student-centered, activity based, anthropological, cultural, synergistic, ontological, semiotic approaches and aesthetic concepts.Our view is that this approach largely determines the substantive and procedural basis of humanization of education; holistic view of patterns of development of human as the natural, social and spiritual creature; holistic view of the content of education as learn experience, represented in the unity of values and meanings.We believe that a teacher-psychologist should be at the center of organizing interaction aimed at musical and creative development of personality in the educational space, with specific forms of professional activity aimed to promote musical and creative development of students at different education stages.Key concepts (categories) form methodological basis of any approach.The aesthetic-semiotic approach (Kurysheva, 2011 a) requires understanding of: music as complex psycho-semantic text full of universal and personal meanings (national culture, style of the era, composer, musical text as a field of meanings, etc. ); education as a purposefully organized process of creative personality development within musical culture, process of learning it through development of musical sense and musical consciousness of an individual through cultural meanings and experiences; creative development as a process of formation and strengthening of musical and cognitive, motivational, emotional, communication, activity-related, axiological (spiritual and moral) characteristics of creative personality in musical-creative activity.
The concept of "personality" in the aesthetic and semiotic approach includes all diverse aspects of being an individual: natural, social, spiritual, historical aspects.The personality is a person that is a unique subject of inculturation and socialization (Kurysheva, 2011 b).
As a result of theoretical and methodological analysis of ideas and concepts related with the question of personality and typicality of development and created by the leading Russian psychologists and psychophysiologists we used the concept of musical abilities developed by Teplov (1946) as the theoretical basis of our research of the psychological foundations of musicality.Analysis of studies conducted in recent years has shown that main points made by Teplov still serve as the main reference points for the majority of Russian studies of musicality, at the same time having undergone a significant development (Vetlugina, 1968;Gotsdiner, 1993;Tarasova, 1988;Toropova, 2009 etc. ).Teplov (1985) defined musicality as a complex of individual psychological characteristics required for a particular musical activity and not any other, but at the same time related with all kinds of musical activity (listening, performance, creation).Teplov (1985) considered experiencing music as expression of some content to be the main feature of musicality.
In particular he noted that musicality is common for all (or almost all) people and at the same time it is different for different people (Teplov, 1985).This conclusion is supported by more recent results of studies made by the psychophysiological laboratory of the Institute of Psycology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Knyazeva, Lebedev, Toropova, 2001).Knyazeva and Lebedev conducted objective psychophysiological study of impression musicality, using EEG as a diagnostic tool for variety of mental processes.Analysis of the results of the study allowed them to conclude that musicality is not just a professional characteristic, but a natural quality, and to some extent is inherent in every human being.Analysis of background EEGs of musicians and other professionals revealed significant differences between them.The researchers found out that the "musical" brain has a larger number of possible states, in other words, higher plasticity.They note that music is rather complex semantic text that requires perceiving brain to do fine analytical work in identifying and structuring audio information flow.The results prove that musical activity leads to increase in plasticity of psychophysiological brain structure required for performing musical tasks.
Experimental studies conducted by Novitskaya (1984) with use of special techniques and equipment reveled differentiated impact of classical and pop music to various brain structures.The studies showed that rock and disco music provoked emotional dullness and negative emotions, stifled creative and thinking activity but increased motor activity.On the contrary, classical music brought enlightened and good feelings and states, stimulating mental and creative processes in the subjects.
Methodological framework of the study of formative potentials of music is determined by complexity and multidimensionality of the subject of the study.In the development of author's musical-semantic model, we relied on some provisions of the synergistic approach (Ivanitsky, 1985;Loskutov, 1990;Haken, 2001 etc. ) This approach focuses on multidimensional, complex nature of objects and phenomena that are constantly evolving, self-organization and self-improvement of systems.
A characteristic feature of the synergistic approach to education is recognizing possibility of multiple ways to transform a personality and quickly solve a critical, precarious educational situation.This manifestation of the human psyche was described by Ushinskiy: "... in the endlessly rich human nature there are such phenomena when a strong emotional shock, extraordinary burst of feeling, strong inspiration at a sweep destroy the most harmful inclinations and ingrained habits, as if erasing, burning in their flame all previous life of the person to start a new one under a new banner" (Ushinskiy, 1970: 155).
Therefore, in our study emphasis is put on the best samples of musical art, masterpieces of classical music.In our study, by "musical masterpiece" we mean a unique, unparalleled creation of the composer, carrying highly spiritual cultural values and capable to serve as the ideal, stimulating harmonious personal and social development (Kurysheva, 2011 b).
Many researchers analysed the question of extramusical phenomena arising during perception of music (Kechhuashvili, 1957; Toropova, Simakova, 2014 etc. ).Those are, for example, visual imagery and associations, symbolic figures, pictures, lighting and color effects.
It was shown that presence of extramusical phenomena cannot be regarded as a prerequisite of adequate music perception, but their presence in most of subjects allows to retrace "undertones" of listener's impression (Kechhuashvili, 1957).
Analysis of the results of the monitoring and review of literature (Kolyadenko, 2003;Kulbizhekov, 2008;Kyshtymova, 2008;Lazutina, 2009;Rafikova, 2006;Toropova, 2008 etc. ) allowed to propose the hypothesis that psychological mechanism for creative personality development by means of music is a system of interrelated conditions, factors for optimization of this process.These include (Kurysheva, 2010 b): complexity, polysemy and semantic versatility of musical text; modeling during creative process of musical perception (thought experiment in musical activity), psychical phenomenon of synaesthesia of musical-artistic consciousness; polymodality of musical perception; symbolism in music, archetypes of musical consciousness and their interaction; psychological mechanism of empathy, compassion, co-creation in the process of musical perception; musical inculturation serves as a universal developing mechanism.

The Hypothesis
The overall hypothesis of the study lies in the assumption that optimum effectiveness in music as a mean of creative personal development is ensured by the aesthetic-semiotic approach to mass music education and the musical semantic model of psychological support of the process developed on the basis of this approach.This hypothesis is revealed through the following special assumptions that should be verified theoretically and experimentally: the result of music education is formation of secondary musical personality that is defined as musically and creatively active entity able to discover, describe, evaluate, and change surrounding reality and their own musical and creative environment and also interact with music and means of musical art in the process of musical activity.Level of development of musical consciousness, its level of musical language and musical-verbal competence depends on level of development of properties and abilities that form psychological structure of secondary musical personality.Structure of the secondary musical personality consists of musical-cognitive, motivational, emotional, communicational, activity-related, spiritual and moral components; basic psychological conditions for effective musical and creative personal development include: 1) richness of emotions and imagery and intellectual and moral content of musical works used in developmental program; 2) diversity of musical and creative activity in motivational, emotional, cognitive, communicative, activity based and moral aspects with account for age-specific psychological characteristics; 3) creation of musical creative environment for development in process of formative work; 4) creative personality of an educator with high level of musicality and productive creative activity; 5) focus of the formative program on developing in a student integral creative personality; development of creative personality by means of music with account for above-mentioned conditions is realized through the program of psychological support aimed to enhance psychological mechanisms of musical and creative development and contributes to formation of secondary musical personality at the highest levels of music education; the complex nature of the program involves realizing it in cognitive, motivational, operational, reflexive and spiritual directions through establishment of musical and creative developmental environment; musical-semantic model of psychological support of creative personal development that is built on the principles of studentcentered approach, subjectivity, cultural conformity, conformity to natural laws, optimal psychological security, integrity, uniqueness, unconditional love, synergy, aesthetics, meaningfulness, dialogueness, integrates complex of psychological conditions necessary and sufficient for musical and creative development of personality; music determines development of creative personality, significantly accelerates and optimizes this process, contributes to spiritual and moral personal development, strengthens the need for self-fulfillment and self-actualization of an individual; these processes are ensured by specific character of the musical text, especially that of masterpieces as works of maximum aesthetic-artistic value, the main criteria of which are: existential and axiological authenticity, richness of emotions and imagery, spiritual and moral content, artistic perfection, inexhaustibility of semantic intention.

Sampling
To explore the musical and creative level of the subject we, first and foremost, had to determine criteria or indicators of productivity of musicality development, musical and creative personal development within higher education.By productive musical and creative personality development we understand primarily personal development of the student, formation of all the components of his secondary musical personality in the process of education.
The formative experiment, the main purpose of which was to create and test model of psychological support and evaluate its effectiveness under conditions of the educational process in a University, had been carried out from 2006 to 2011 on the basis of the Humanities Institute of Volzhsky (branch) of Volgograd State University, Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Institute of Business and Politics.During the experiment, for all subject groups we used a variety of psychodiagnostical techniques.
In order to identify effectiveness of support of musical creative personal development at higher education stages in musical and creative environment we found it useful to compare 3 groups of subjects participating in the experimental study: The group E1 is the experimental group of students included in the program of psychological support (N=60); E2 is an experimental group of students who participate in the formative experiment at the school stage (N=33); K group is a control group of students participating in ascertaining and control experiments (N=90).

Methods
To accomplish the established goals and confirm the initial hypothesis we used a variety of interrelated and complementary research methods: study and analysis of theoretical and applied research in developmental and educational psychology on the subject of the study, empirical methods: experiment (ascertaining and forming); testing, surveys, observation, psycho-semiotic analysis of statements, self-observational essays, content-analysis of statements, essays-musical impressions; analysis of products of creative activity, projective methods.Also quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis of data obtained during the study were used.To confirm validity of the obtained results mathematical methods of processing the obtained data were used.
The process of creative development of personality by means of music within conceptual musical semantic model involves creation of a common space of specially-organized musical creative environment (Kurysheva, 2010 a), based on an original artistic and aesthetic development of values of the world musical culture, perception of works of classical music as the best examples of manifestations of the human (composer, performer) spiritual life, in the development of dialogical communication between educator, psychologist and students in the process of perception of music.Especially important for formation of musical creative environment is using "live" classical music (Kurysheva, 2008 a).By the concept of "live music" we mean the process of musical communication determined by the sound of music performed "live" in a concert setting, in a situation of domestic music-making with the use of one or more brass, strings, percussion musical instruments, excluding electronic musical instruments.
The main factor of psychological effect of music on the development of musicality and activation of creative potential is richness of emotions and imagery and intellectual and moral content (spirituality) of classical music masterpieces.
We consider those works to be part of "tuning fork" culture.The "tuning fork" culture (Kyshtymova, 2008) contains attitudes of four ideological semantic levels: everyday life, social, national and cultural, spiritual.For development of creativity system dominance of the highest-spiritual level of meaning is important.The more internalized values of the "tuning fork" culture there are, the more there are alternative meanings, options for individual choice of free behavior, more opportunities to estimate probable models of action and creative actualization of one of them (Kyshtymova, 2008).The degree of inculturation largely determines the level of creativity.Creative personality is forming within the culture.In our study, we use the concept of the "tuning fork" musical culture.
The music in question is inherently intonational and has primarily emotional and expressive character, uses mostly tones instead of noise, is based on an 12-step tempered pitch and the special tone organization called tonality.There is no system of musical means that would be uniform for all times and nations.There are different systems, different musical languages, although there are similarities between them.Here we refer to the tonal system that formed in European professional music of the XVII century, that had been completely dominant for the following two centuries and still has a great value now, after creation of atonal music.This is so far the only music system that has spread across the whole world and has been accepted by the widest range of listeners as the basis of high art, and in particular monumental art.
We will analyze methods and techniques of developing individuality in the process of perception, performance, creation of music and music-related artistic activities.
1. Writing essays about musical impressions, feelings or speaking about them, self observational essays.Listeners were free to describe anything they wanted to, without any context except of the directive to "listen to yourself".We have developed a framework for analysis of the results (Kurysheva, 2007).The following characteristics can be evaluated during analysis of written works: level of association generalizations, presence or absence of an emotional component, motivation for consciously directed activity, movement, desire to sing, write or read poems, presence or absence of memories, especially accompanied by self-awareness (lightness/heaviness, heat/cold).
2. Creative tasks using potential of the fine arts (sculpture, painting, graphics, artistic photography).Evocation by students of artistic images and moods inspired by music by the means of fine arts.Ability to choose the following things based on impressions from a particular piece of music: a certain color, color scheme, shapes (circle, square, triangle, line, splash of color); types of fine art (drawing, printing, appliqued ornament, form, construction); handicraft techniques (sculpture, wood carving, pyrography, carving, flower arranging, weaving, embroidery, toy-making); correspondent example of the art, literature.
3. Verbal, vocal, instrumental, rhythmic, plastic improvisation under the impression from music (composing a poem, story, fairy tale; writing a song, instrumental play; knocking, clapping, stamping the rhythm; conducting, dance moves).
The following are examples of creative tasks performed during the perception of music.
Task.Listen to character pieces from The Seasons by Tchaikovsky ("February: Carnival", "April: Snowdrop", "July: Song of the Reaper", "November: Troika") and try to guess the month depicted in the music piece and choose a color appropriate for the music.During the second performance (title is given, the related poem is not read along) try to understand and write down the content of the music, what is portrayed and expressed in it.The works can include humorous stories; descriptions of nature; student's feelings, mood; situations.We should note that only few works were dry lists of objects with 1-2 characteristics, actions.Mostly works contained: optimistic view of the future, hopes for the best.
Students were offered tasks for independent work with use of exercises based on the psychological mechanism of synaesthesia (Cheremisova, 2016).After familiarizing students with exhibits of the photo exhibition of artistic paintings, they were asked to share their impressions in the form of reflection essays; choose music masterpieces they associated with those exhibits.
For example, after visiting the exhibition of artistic photography students of the Psychology Department posted on their pages of the social network Vkontakte musical works which, in their view, corresponded to the most memorable photos.These were works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig V. Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach etc. Their numerous friends who visited their pages could listen to this music.Options of the social network Vkontakte in most cases allow you to find your favorite piece of music in the best performance and post it on your webpage.This form of communication through music in work with students allows professor to demonstrate his or her musical preferences of high musical and artistic taste.
The wider repertoire of art languages that the student becomes acquainted in the process is, the more opportunities to express meanings he or she gets.During such lessons actualization of musical text perceived by recipients becomes more and more corresponding to the peculiarities of personal meaning which a person gives to the perceived text and to the objective semantic content of it.

Procedure
Within the experimental study at the stage of ascertaining experiment the following objectives were set: 1) to determine the level of musical and creative development of students from experimental and control groups; 3) to identify characteristics of musical and creative development of University students.
In conditions of experimental work on the program "Up to the Stairs of Music to the Heights of Art" psychological mechanism of creative personality development by means of music was tasted and efficiency of the proposed model was confirmed.Implementation of this program in the University has some specific characteristics.
Firstly, there are no music lessons in the educational process of the universities (except musical educational institutions).Because of this, we used background music that accompanied various moments of the student life: broadcast music pieces at the beginning and during the day, during breaks, in the dining hall, have musicians perform in the lobby (for example, string quartet) or on the street in front of the entrance to the university (for example, two saxophonists).
Secondly, due to large number of student groups and large size of audiences listening to music was the main type of musical creative activity (Teplov, 1946), since it is the most affordable type in conditions of teaching process in higher education.
Thirdly, the university has large number of holidays, that create a special atmosphere of college life, providing great opportunities for other kinds of artistic activities related to music (performance and writing).Students, teachers, university employees and students of musical educational institutions, professional musicians from the Philharmonia participated in these celebrations.
Fourthly, there was possibility to participate in the activities of student musical performance group.Such group can be a student choir, vocal or instrumental group.
Relations with musical educational institutions were used for this music perception.This allowed to involve a larger number of students in the perception of musical masterpieces.Young musicians of the musical educational institutes must develop their professional performance skills by, repeatedly performing finished pieces of music to the audience at concerts, while students of universities that are not related to music need to listen to the "live" music.

Results and discussion
In general, basing on the results of ascertaining experiment it was concluded that there is no any effective system of purposeful support of the process of musical and creative development within higher education.
The results of the study showed that: a large part of young students was not very familiar with masterpieces of world musical art and finds music surrogates satisfying enough, has little creative musical experience.Most of the teachers did not know specifics of the psycho-physiological effects of music on people; lacked knowledge about the possible forms of work for development of musicality and creative abilities of students in the educational process; often had a superficial understanding of the psychology of creativity and the psychology of musical perception; underestimated formative and transformative potential of music.
Subjects with higher levels of musicality had higher rates of overall creative abilities; the correlation coefficient of musicality indicators and creative development level is positive and meaningful and is 0. 56 (p  0. 05), confirming the possibility of using means of musical art for development of creative abilities.
Diagnosing of musical and creative personality development of the university students was carried out in accordance with the structure of psychological readiness for creative activity.The main components of psychological readiness to be investigated are cognitive, motivational, operational, reflexive and spiritually-moral (axiological) component.
As shown by the results of ascertaining and formative experiments, there were significant changes in indicators of axiological personality characteristics of students: in the experimental groups, a significant increase of indicators characterizing the level of sense of purpose in life, awareness of the goals of it was noted.Any significant changes in these indicators among students in the control group were not detected.
In addition, analysis of the self-observational essays, essays-musical impressions, reflection essays; analysis of process and results of creative activity of students showed that musical and creative development of students, with indicators relevant to the high readiness level may indicate formation of secondary musical personality, full-fledged subject of musical culture.Such a person has strong motivation for musical and creative activity; need to perceive complex, profound musical texts; sufficient level of musical competence and musical abilities for perception of classical music masterpieces, which includes qualitative characteristics of artistic and aesthetic perception.Artistic and aesthetic perception of music is characterized by sort of co-creation, such understanding of art where relations between the listener and the author of the work should be construed as dialogue.
Thus, on the basis of the totality of the obtained results of the study we can conclude that in the context of our theoretical and applied psycho-pedagogical models of musical and creative development of personality in the educational process of the university, conditions for effective support of creative development are provided.
In the process of our theoretical and experimental study on finding comprehensive solutions for problems of musical creative personal development of a student within higher education and development of science-based approach for a psychologist to establish psychological-pedagogical conditions to effectively support creative development, the set tasks were resolved, and the results of the study confirmed all hypotheses set by us.
1.The comparative analysis of existing approaches to the educational process has shown that, with all the variety of views on the problem of correlation of education and a person, of education and culture, it is possible to identify general provisions that unite these approaches in the context of the modern educational paradigm.The realization that the modern period in development of education is characterized by the tendency to integrate different approaches allowed us to develop and substantiate the aesthetic-semiotic approach as methodological basis for choosing and constructing the content of education.creative environment" in the process of mass music education (Kurysheva, 2011 b).The model is represented by a combination of interrelated objectives, stages, content, methods and conditions of creative personality development by means of music.Basing on results of mass music education we justified the content and identified structural and substantive components of the secondary musical personality.A distinctive feature of our model of musical and creative personal development is that it stays effective at all stages of mass musical education.This secured continuity of musical education of the individual, expanded the possibilities of musical and creative development of personality in adolescence within higher education environment.

Conclusions
The results of our study suggest that our concept of musical and creative personality development in the educational process solves complex challenges of aesthetic, creative development of youth, spiritualization of education, contributes to development of dialogical communication between educators, psychologists, and young people, improves musical competence and culture of all actors of the educational process.

3 .
Results of the formative experiment showed that the implementation of the special educational program "Up to the Stairs of Music to the Heights of Art" in the educational process and educational work significantly accelerates and optimizes development of musicality and creativity of the individual and strengthens internal relationship of musicality and creativity.Under such conditions, correlation of musicality indicators and creative development level significantly increases and is represented by the coefficient of 0. 68 (p  0. 01).