Musical Experience as an Exemplar for the Philosophy of Time

Abstract Various eminent composers and musicians have claimed that music is the art of time and that important philosophical implications may follow from that. This paper aims to corroborate and explicate such claims in a step-by-step fashion. It starts by introducing some central questions from the philosophy of time. Next, the intimate relationship between time and hearing is discussed, before moving on to the specific case of music and musical experience. As it turns out, many of the philosophical questions about time find direct and natural counterparts in music and its aural experience. Indeed, music somehow renders the involved ‘themes’ directly tangible. Accordingly, the paper concludes with some general reflections on the notion of experience in relation to our understanding and handling of time – and on why listening may be a particularly important virtue in our encounter with the world.