Between Emerging and Fading: the Temporal Nature of Musical Events as Living Phenomena

Abstract This article investigates the temporal dimensions of live musical events, with a focus on jazz improvisation. Drawing on phenomenology, cultural philosophy, and musicology, the Gestalt of a musical event is conceptualized as an interplay of three temporal dimensions: playing time (lived time), soundscape (spatial imagination of music), and Nachklang (lasting resonance beyond the event). Through examples from Coltrane, Miles Davis, George Russell, and Pharoah Sanders, the paper demonstrates how improvisation embodies time as fluid, embodied, and transformative rather than mechanistic. Steinmetz argues that live performance not only resists reduction to digital binaries but also affirms music’s role as a meaning-making, identity-shaping practice within human culture. Finally, the article highlights how the temporal Gestalt of improvisation situates music as a living phenomenon that shapes consciousness, community, and memory.