The text examines pedagogicity as a principle (στοιχεῖον) inherent to musical activity and as the bearer of the secret of musical devotion. For musical pedagogicity, music is a mode of being and dwelling that reveals our continual capacity to alter ourselves, to be transformed. This pedagogicity naturally precedes any pedagogical abstract metaphysics—that is, the originally objectified and structurally presupposed pedagogy of traditional education.

The thesis of the article is that in the musical act we constantly and unfailingly choose one among all the possibilities of being. Often this choice has already been made and prefigures the kind of music we wish to hear. Music attracts and astonishes us to such an extent that it confronts us with a question implicit in the very act of making music: “How can I be in this way?” The encounter with music is an “encounter-question,” since it inevitably touches our existential, life-defining choice.

Insofar as, simply stated, we “cannot do without music,” answering this question is one of our human responsibilities. My conscious “What do I play?” and accordingly “What do I listen to?” is not so much an expression of whim or even taste, but an articulated, responsible reception of a world and a position within that world. In music we continuously bear witness to ourselves—to how and who we are (or choose to be).