esthesic

Melodic expectation can been considered at the esthesic level, in which case the focus lies on the listener and its response to music.

There are three levels of description, the poietic, the neutral, and the esthesic:

The neutral level is the "trace" left behind, the physical or material creation of esthesic and poietic processes.

(In semiological terms, this is a gap between the esthesic and poietic processes.)

Jean shows that musical analysis shifted from an emphasis upon the poietic vantage point to an esthesic one at the beginning of the eighteenth century .

(93) However, Nattiez points out that even if we could determine "what Mozart was thinking" we would still be lacking an analysis of the neutral and esthesic levels.

A fourth trend may group generalist theories whose focus lies neither in step-by-step processes nor in quantitative operations, and may include elements pertinent to the esthesic level such as cognition and neurophysiology.

This process is, however, also part of the esthesic process, for it is in and through the reception of the 'work-in-process'18 that the viewer is able to participate in the poietic process, and 'work' the work.

This includes the physical dimension or corpus being studied, the level of stylistic relevance studied, and whether the description provided by the analysis is of its immanent structure, compositional (or poietic) processes, perceptual (or esthesic) processes , all three, or a mixture.