Professor Bettina Varwig, a musicologist at the University of Cambridge, contends that contemporary classical audiences are systematically discouraged from engaging their bodies, being instructed to suppress the very visceralvisceral/ˈvɪsərəl/L3内脏的；发自肺腑的，本能的Relating to deep inward feelings rather than intellect; arising from instinct or emotion rather than conscious thought. responses—breathing, pulsing, feeling—that define human experience. Concert halls, she argues, demand passive stillness, forbidding the sighs, tears, or spontaneous applause that the corporeal and spiritual intensity of works like Bach’s St John Passion might naturally provoke. This enforced immobility, she suggests, severs the profound connection between music and the listener’s physical being, a connection that was once central to musical experience. Her research into 17th- and 18th-century testimonies reveals a radically different paradigmparadigm/ˈpærədaɪm/L3范例，范式；典型模式A typical example or pattern of something; a model or framework that shapes how something is understood or done.: listeners described music that “contracted their innards,” made their hearts leap, tasted like vinegar in the throat, or even melted earwax. Such accounts, drawn from philosophers, theologians, and medics, portray music as a force capable of moving, ravishing, and even curing, entering the body through the pores and spreading contagiously among people.
To test this theory, Varwig collaborated with musicians from the Royal Academy of Music—violinist Margaret Faultless and tenor Nicholas Mulroy—in a two-day workshop centered on Bach’s St John Passion, explicitly not aimed at performance or recording but at allowing the music to dictate physical and emotional responses. Participants were not instructed to dance, kneel, or gesticulate; nevertheless, they spontaneouslyspontaneously/spɒnˈteɪniəsli/L3自发地，自然地；非计划地In a way that is natural, unplanned, or done without external prompting. did so, finding that the “cosmically messy” intensity of their playing amplified the pain of the tenor aria “Ach, mein Sinn.” In another aria, “Erwäge, wie sein blutgefärbter Rücken,” the performers knelt with outstretched hands, entreating heaven in a display of embodied listening that fostered an intimacy conventional concerts rarely permit. This phenomenon of physical engagement, Varwig notes, did not vanish entirely in the 19th century: Hector Berlioz, trained as a doctor, described listening to Beethoven’s Op 131 quartet in 1829 with biological precision, feeling a heavy weight on his chest and his teeth chattering.
The historical shift toward silent, still audiences, identified by Stendhal at the Paris opera in 1824 as a trend that would diminish enjoyment, became entrenchedentrenched/ɪnˈtrentʃt/L3根深蒂固的；确立的，牢固的Firmly established and difficult to change; deeply ingrained in a system or culture. as classical music culture progressed through the 19th century, despite the counterexample of London’s Promenade concerts, which from 1895 allowed movement. Varwig argues that many musical works lose their power without bodily engagement—from chattering teeth to contracting innards—and harbors “utopian visions” where such physical and emotional attunementattunement/əˈtjuːnmənt/L3调谐；协调，一致；共鸣The state of being in harmony or alignment with something; a sensitive adjustment or responsiveness. becomes the norm. For participants like Faultless, the project proved transformative, enabling them to inhabit Bach’s intensity freely, attuned to fellow performers and listeners, and to respond through shared humanity in an “intensely immediate, connected and transformative” manner. Notwithstanding the current cultural inertia, Varwig’s bold proposition challenges the classical music establishment to reconsider the fundamental relationship between sound, body, and emotion.
