The paper deals with the production of musical meaning by performers and listeners in order to understand how musical communication takes place between them. It includes an approach both practical and theoretical: a pedagogical experiment on teaching students music interpretation is reported, and an inquiry crossing the work of Lakoff and Johnson with the contributions of Donald and Trevarthen is developed, establishing an alternative account of meaning, which is summarised in five principles. The results show that during the ritual of a musical performance, performer and listener somehow capture the same level of meaning production, which is operating below their conscious awareness and revealing the embodied structure of experience. At this level, what is shared is not so much the same meaning but rather the same process of producing musical meanings that may only be expressed in terms of a quasi-corporeal experience.
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