Classical music has a problem with embodiment. Whether it’s sexist critics focusing more on a female artist’s outfit than her technique or scolds who expect an audience to sit in stillness and silence until after the final note has sounded, many people seem to view actual human bodies as an obstacle to the deepest experience of this music. Perhaps it’s the rhetoric of transcendence run amok—Shuffle off your mortal coil! Leave behind any ties to this earthy plane and listen to the music of the spheres!—but classical music seems particularly hostile to engaging with the realness of physicality.
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