The body behind music: precedents and prospects

The involvement of the body in musical experiences is a phenomenon that has been noted since ancient times, and many authors have cited the organic rhythms of the body as providing the experiential basis for musical rhythm. The input of our bodily experiences to the comprehension of music has recently been investigated by various researchers in music theory. A similar interest in the bodily basis of music is also seen in studies of expressive music performance. Systematic – and experimental – research on the bodily dimension of musical experiences can be traced back to the 19th century. The rise of scientific psychology from within the experimental physiology of the period gave 19th century theories concerning the workings of the human mind a decisively embodiedcharacter. Hence, recent research on expressive performance is rooted in 19th century theories of music performance that employed bodily phenomena as models. This article provides a survey of these early performance studies in the light of 19th century psychology, and discusses rhythmic structure as the basis of a theory of expressive performance.¹