ABSTRACT
The myth of Syrinx provides a striking indication of music's expressive force. The cultural value that Claude Lévi-Strauss assigns to music and myth underscores the way that he regards both to be instruments of time's obliteration. The musical creator has a share in the mythic gods' mysterious powers as recounted in myth. Myth's logical function is predicated on the narrative resolution of the existential conflicts that give rise to the contradictions that this logical function is said to solve. Accordingly, structural analysis raises the question of myth's—and music's—existential significance to a higher level of radicality. Liminal experiences that revoke the profane order of time's relentless march seemingly share sacred features of the mythic return to a time in illo tempore. The reenactment of archetypal gestures restores the mythic order of the cosmos through returning to the sacred time of myth.
