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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Music in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology

Music in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology

Varwig, Bettina

Hardcover

Series: New Material Histories of Music

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral MusicMusic Reference

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0226826880
ISBN13: 9780226826882
Publisher: Univ Of Chicago Pr
Published: Jul 20 2023
Pages: 360
Weight: 1.50
Height: 1.30 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
A corporeal history of music-making in early modern Europe.

Music in the Flesh reimagines the lived experiences of music-making subjects--composers, performers, listeners--in the long seventeenth century. There are countless historical testimonies of the powerful effects of music upon the early modern body; it is described as moving, ravishing, painful, dangerous, curative, and miraculous while affecting the circulation of the humors, the purification of the blood, the dilation of the vessels and pores.

How were these early modern European bodies constituted that music generated such potent bodily-spiritual effects? Bettina Varwig argues that early modern music-making practices challenge our modern understanding of human nature as a mind-body dichotomy. Instead, they persistently affirm a more integrated anthropology, in which body, soul, and spirit remain inextricably entangled. Moving with ease across repertories and regions, sacred and vernacular musics, and domestic and public settings, Varwig sketches a musical physiology that is as historically illuminating as it is relevant for present-day performance. This book makes a significant contribution not just to the history of music, but also to the history of the body, the senses, and the emotions, revealing music as a unique access point for reimagining early modern modes of being-in-the-world.

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