The article's goals are to contribute to the clarification of the term aesthetic experience used in the context of music education, and to discuss different interpretations of Kant in this context. As the musical aesthetic experience may be said to be at the core of music education, it should be of vital interest to music education research to clarify the term. Usage of this term in some Nordic literature confirms the impression of a strong influence by Anglo-American thinking at the expense of German ideas and discussions in the last decades. The article reveals how different understandings of the term in the Anglo-American and German fields, respectively, give rise even to contradictory statements concerning the meaning and implications of the term. Keywords: Aesthetic experience, music education, philosophy