Review: Romantic Anatomies of Performance, by J. Q. Davies

Abstract

Romantic Anatomies of Performance , by J. Q. Davies. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014. xiii, 265 pp. In this startlingly original and subtly written book J. Q. Davies trains his focus on a narrow slice of history—performances by virtuoso artists, in London and Paris, “around 1830”—to explore a wide range of issues concerning the corporeal, material, and tactile aspects of music and musical experience. These issues have been receiving increasing attention in musicology. From various perspectives Elizabeth LeGuin, Matthew Head, Emily Dolan, Martha Feldman, Mary Ann Smart, and Roger Moseley have been historicizing the sensory dimensions of musical experience—the immersive sensation of theater events, the frisson of sonic vibration, the performer's bond with the instrument—while also exploring the hermeneutic, social, and political implications of this sensorium. Within this trend, Davies's book stands out for its focus on the history of anatomy, physiology, and medical science, setting a new standard for ways in which musicology and the history of science can intersect. He concentrates less on the “body” as a unitary construct than on specific anatomical parts—the hands and the vocal organs—each of which was subject to intensive scientific scrutiny and debate around 1830. This date also marks seismic shifts in the history of piano playing and operatic singing, and the book's leading questions follow from this convergence. How was the experience of piano playing mediated by a new, acute …