ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the conceptual ramifications of meaningfulness as an analytical concept for musical performance. Expounding the concept’s scope, the chapter introduces the neo-phenomenology of atmospheres (Schmitz, Böhme) more systematically and proposes ways of thinking through music with atmospheres. Based on an in-depth analysis of chesóls, a Palauan solo chant, I flesh out the layered complexity of musical meaningfulness: it often presents itself as an atmosphere that will be experienced with the felt body, leveraging both affective and interpretative frames but exceeding both by way of its primarily corporeal experiential quality. This finding opens vistas to overcoming several of the binaries lingering in more dominant scholarly traditions of thinking through affective publics.
