The Body-Instrument Relationship in Musical Performance

Abstract

This article focuses on understanding the body-instrument relationship in the musical performer through a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. The authors seek to explore the lived experience of the musician and their relationship with the instrument, which inevitably involves a body that grounds movement in the interweaving of musical performance. To this end, they draw on the theoretical contributions of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty as a means of understanding the lived body and the body-in-movement within musical formation. In its concluding section, the article argues that performance interweaves perception and movement with intentionality, giving rise to a form of embodied knowledge that shapes and gives meaning to musical discourse.