ABSTRACT. Zemach and Balter insist that two central characteristics of music make it amenable to situational irony: (i) music raises expectations (competent listeners project situations they consider right for the musical conditions at hand), and (ii) listeners compare and contrast the anticipated situation (a musical event) with the one that does occur in the work. According to Graham, performance should reveal the sonic properties of a musical composition in a way that no musicological analysis of the “meaning” of the piece or study of the emotional life of the composer could do. Scruton says that our ways of grouping and streaming individual sound events reflect a peculiar metaphysical feature of sounds. Cross and Morley explain that music may have developed from functions evolved for particular life-supporting purposes. (pp. 329–334)

Keywords: music, listener, performance, composition, sound, interpretation