An analysis of classic and contemporary music fragments covering text and music discloses that conceptual disintegration linked to metonymy constitutes an essential tool for meaning (re)construction in programmatic music. This study proposes four main contributions to the field. First, it advocates the complementarity of conceptual disintegration networks and metonymic mappings in order to cogently explain disintegration as product and process. Second, it offers a theoretical categorization of conceptual disintegration in terms of the “disintegration level” and “subsidiarity level” between the represented part and the overall conceptual package. Third, it asserts that metonymy emerges as potent analytical tool as it counts on a higher level of constraint than blends. A view from Conceptual Metonymy Theory elables to enlarge the inventory of possible meaning reconstruction processes in multimodal use. Fourth, this paper considers musical and verbomusical examples, mainly unexamined in cognitive-linguistic research.