ABSTRACT
Musical sense-making relies on two distinct representational formats: an analog image system and a language-like or propositional system. Much research on musical meaning has focused narrowly on the lexico-semantic dimensions of conceptualization, equating sense-making with a logocentric view on music cognition. This chapter argues against this narrow view and considers music knowledge construction from an enactive point of view. The distinction underlines the role of knowledge construction in a real-time listening situation as the outcome of continuous epistemic interactions with the sounds, stressing the bottom-up approach of the actual experience of sounding music as against the top-down approach of applying labels to the sonorous unfolding. Revolving around perception-action loops and sensorimotor couplings, the chapter offers a theoretical framework that is grounded in the concept of circularity between an organism and its environment. It provides an explanatory theory in which the role of functional significance in knowledge construction is emphasized on the basis of deictic, enactive, ecological, and biosemiotic claims.
