In his treatment of the aesthetics of music, Roger Scruton offers a relevant concept of the meaning of music, one which amounts to a philosophically tenable alternative to the semiotic theories of musical semantics. This study aims at surmounting the problematic status of Scruton's theory with its lack of a systematic, exhaustive approach to the subject of musical meaning, and through analysis of Scruton's musical-aesthetic texts draws up a definition of Scruton's approach to the meaning of music. To achieve this, the present text employs two methodological procedures making it possible to reveal the key characteristics of Scruton's approach. The first of these consists in a reconstruction of Scruton's critique of the semiotics of music. There, the meaning of music emerges as a metaphorical phenomenon which is perceived by the listener in a work of music per se. The second characteristic relates to Scruton's approach to musical experience. This is understood to be a specific case of aesthetic experience, which delineates the field of the listener's musical understanding of a performed work of music. Here, the meaning of music is presented as the object of the listener's musical understanding, whose constitution is based on the metaphoric and intentional processuality of the aesthetic experience of music. These observations lead the author to the conclusion that the meaning of music is a quality of metaphorical expression by which the listener gets a non-conceptual reminder, at the moment of their aesthetic contact with a work of music, of crucial aspects of their own existence.
