Studies of musical agency have been growing in the field of music theory since the publication of Edward T. Cone's book The Composer's Voice (1974). Indeed, recent publications by scholars such as Robert Hatten and Seth Monahan demonstrate that musical agency continues to be a topic worthy of investigation today. These authors tend to explore the function of agents within a piece, virtually ignoring the way agents arise in music. One question that deserves more attention, then, is: By what criteria can one locate musical agency in a given work?

I propose that the concept of musical intention provides music theorists with a possible answer to this question. Action Theory, a robust subfield active in philosophy and sociology, views intentionality as a focal point in research on human agency -- research that deserves more attention in studies of musical agency. Following assertions by action theorists Donald Davidson and Alfred Mele, I argue that an entity only attains the status of an agent when it performs an intentional act. With respect to music, then, I outline seven categories of intentionality that can offer support to an agential hearing. Further, I suggest that certain passages of music can be interpreted as intentional acts performed by virtual musical agents.

After defining each category of intentionality, I demonstrate their use in an agential analysis that adds nuance to Hatten's (1993) and Charles Fisk's (2001) readings of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A, D. 959. Fisk, for example, anthropomorphizes the first phrase of the first movement by claiming that it yearns for the complete state achieved by the fourth movement's Rondo theme, and yet his agent does not appear until the first movement's second phrase. Adding depth to Fisk's argument, I suggest that two agents are present at the beginning of the movement, and I investigate how these agents act throughout the piece. Not only does an understanding of intentionality in music clarify earlier work on musical agency, but it also provides opportunities for richer interpretive analyses.