Until recently, music scholars have neglected the hiscorical study of culturalrelations between bodily and musical experiences. In critical discourse, classicalmusic was predominantly characterised as an intellectual, spiritual and'purifying' enterprise. However, between 1890 and 1940, many Belgian criticsappreciated references to bodily sensuality, ambiguity and 'impurity' in musicallanguage. This paper offers a historical survey of these two oppositional stances.Drawing on case-studies from Wagner to jazz, I show how, in the interwarperiod, the primary way of inscribing the body in music shifted fromharmony to rhythm.
