Pawel Piotrowski, PhD
Volume: 14 Issue: 05, 2026
Abstract:
This article develops a communicological model of the musical act and examines its theological relevance for ecclesial participation. It argues that music communicates not primarily by transmitting a determinate message but by organising relations among participants across time. The proposed communicative spiral comprises seven analytical levels: participants, relations, mechanisms, negotiated meanings, emergent properties, social agency, and transformed conditions of subsequent action. Five mechanisms—synchronisation, co-presence, coordination, communicative resonance, and emergence—explain how musical events acquire relational efficacy. A nine-profile typology distinguishes acts by their dominant organisation rather than by genre alone. The model is then specified theologically through liturgical participation and communio, while retaining a critical distinction between social cohesion and ecclesial communion. Finally, the article proposes indicators for empirical research and states the model’s limits. Its original contribution is an integrated, empirically testable framework connecting musical interaction, meaning, emergence, and agency without reducing music either to language or to autonomous form.