Music and the Body Between Revolutions: Paris, 1789-1848

• Du 31/03/2017 au 01/04/2017
• New York, Columbia University

Colloque organisé par Carmel Raz, Julia Doe et Céline Frigau.

http://music.columbia.edu/events/music-and-the-body-between-revolutions-paris-1789-1848

The workings of the corporeal and spiritual body were repeatedly reimagined in France between

1789 and 1848, as successive revolutions fundamentally transformed understandings of bodily

autonomy and moral responsibility. Discourses in philosophy, aesthetics, and the sciences were

strongly affected by these events, as the radical reconfiguration of the institutional landscape from

1789 onwards led to the emergence of Paris as an international center for modern science and

medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, Paris also became a crucial

locus of activity in the musical sphere, a city of innovative composers, virtuoso performers, and

instrument designers as well as a rising culture of musical ‘dilettantes.’

Understandings of the body, as shared between the musical and the scientific spheres, will lie at

the heart of our exploration. The late eighteenth century saw various conceptions of the body set

into flux, influenced by the writings of philosophers such as Rousseau and Diderot. In the domain

of the medical sciences, Jean-Nicolas Corvisart and René Laënnec regarded the body as a site

from which to develop new understandings of timbre and listening, while Xavier Bichat

reinvigorated the Vitalist frameworks of sympathy and harmony in order to examine the relationship

between various executive organs of the body. This period also saw the rise of new “moral”

approaches toward insanity associated with Philippe Pinel, as well as the phrenological

classifications of the Paris-based Franz Joseph Gall. The repercussions of these developments

were directly felt in the musical realm, and played out on the operatic stage, in the soundscapes of

Revolutionary festivals, and in theoretical, medical, and governmental inquiries into the

relationships between music and human behavior.

This interdisciplinary workshop will examine the interaction between music, science, and medicine

in Paris, as they were influenced by the reframing of the self in the aftermath of successive

revolutionary upheavals. It will bring together scholars from the fields of musicology, performance

studies, literature, and the history of science and medicine in order to explore historical and

emerging contemporary perspectives on the body.