ABSTRACT
Musical sense-making, therefore, is an ongoing process of dynamic interactivity between the listener and the music that includes interactions at several levels. The interactive approach to musical sense-making and knowledge construction is an emerging topic in music semiotics, and it reflects the shift from a representation-centered framework toward a paradigm that stresses the role of action and experience. Music semiotics, however, as an autonomous field of inquiry, is rather young and is positioning itself in the broader context of musicology and semiotics. One of the pending topics in contemporary music semiotics is the distinction between an object-centered approach to music and a subjective or experiential approach to musical sense-making. The experiential approach to music perception, moreover, is related to earlier claims in cognitive musicology, which conceived of music as human experience rather than as a set of artefacts or structures. Experiencing music demands a dynamics of representation that spans a continuum between step-by-step processing and synoptic overview.
