Cambridge project revives 17th-century embodied listening in classical music workshops

University of Cambridge professor Bettina Varwig led a workshop with Royal Academy of Music musicians to practice historically documented physical responses to Bach’s St John Passion.

• Varwig's research found that 17th- and 18th-century listeners described music as "moving, ravishing, painful, dangerous, curative and miraculous," affecting bodies physically.
• Musicians at the workshop, including violinist Margaret Faultless and tenor Nicholas Mulroy, moved freely during Bach's piece without choreographed instructions, including kneeling and gesticulating.
• Faultless described the performance as "cosmically messy" and "unbearable" in its emotional intensity and physical confrontation with the music.
• Varwig said she has "utopian visions where this level of physical and emotional engagement among performers and audiences becomes the norm in the classical music world."