A musical ordering of time could be viewed as an intention composed in music – in other words, as a musical embodiment of intention.

The definition of ‘intention’ in the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘the act or fact of intending’, where ‘to intend’ means ‘to have (a course of action) as one's purpose’. The use of ‘intention’ in this chapter includes the exploration of the word's root. It is derived from the Latin intentio, which has a variety of meanings, including: 1) ‘tension’; 2) ‘attention’, as in the attention of an audience to a play on the stage (intentio lusûs); and 3) ‘will’ or ‘purpose’. This noun also relates to the Latin verb intendere, which can be translated as: 1) ‘to stretch’ (like the string of an archer's bow) or, in post-classical Latin, ‘to strum’ (i.e., the strings of an instrument); moreover, one of the meanings of tendere is ‘to tune’, and intendere is metaphorically understood as ‘to have as one's purpose’; 2) the verb can also mean ‘to extend’, ‘to aim’, ‘to address’, or ‘to direct (someone’s) attention (to something)’; connected with this meaning, as a response to being addressed, is ‘to pay attention to’, which, after the second century CE, develops into ‘to listen to’.