Essay on the transcendental nature in music performance: Conceptualization and soteriological parallels

Abstract

This essay aims to clarify the concept of transcendental experience in musical performance, as a way to understand, for further research, how much it can be achieved and what would be - if any - its soteriological function, i.e., of human salvation, in life of the human being. To this end, it first seeks to clarify the linguistic confusion about the transcendental term referring to music and, through parallels with the ancient philosophies of the Hellenes and their understandings of experience, to discern how it occurs during the performance – or if it does, in fact – as well as understanding its limitations in this one through the limits of human knowledge regarding the transcendental. The methodology, initially, will be entirely theoretical, seeking bibliographical sources to substantiate any hypothesis that may arise through the interdisciplinary parallels made. Based on this, I conclude that it is something immanent, not transcendent, in which the performer reaches a state of implicit conceptualization, resulting from the automation of studies and close to states of great tranquility and non-duality – i.e., the barrier between subject and object becomes more tenuous.