This chapter examines the relationship between music, ‘time’, and improvisation and describes how music makes temporal phenomena manifest. Musical works are based on temporal structures; that is, on the patterned interplay of pitches, timbres, and rhythms, which are all based on regular sequences of sound. I discuss the influence of modern composers such as Stockhausen, Zimmermann, and Cage, for whom ‘time’ is the central element of their works. Next, I explore improvisation as a creative process in which musicians react spontaneously to each other and establish common ‘variations’, that is, patterns of repetition and novelty. Jazz functions as a sample case because of its prominent interplay between individual creativity and collective coherence, whereby musicians gain something like ‘temporal autonomy’ and develop what might be called their ‘individual pitch’ or ‘own voice’. As it turns out, improvisation—for which ‘extemporisation’ would be the more telling term—is not only constitutive in musical contexts but also in individual and social contexts where interaction and adaptation come into play. Auditory experience can, as it were, become a nonverbal experiential context transcending personal and cultural boundaries and a model for human coexistence.