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The Revival of Embodied Listening Professor Bettina Varwig, an academic at the University of Cambridge, is on a mission to revolutionize the way we experience classical music. She believes that the traditional concert hall setting, where audiences are expected to remain silent and still, stifles the true emotional and physical impact of the music. The Historical Context of Embodied Listening Varwig's research has uncovered a wealth of evidence that early modern audiences experienced music in a profoundly physical way. Listeners described music as melting their earwax, making their teeth rattle, and drawing their souls out of their bodies. Philosophers, music theorists, and listeners of the time wrote about the bodily intensity of music, describing it as moving, ravishing, painful, and curative. A New Approach to Classical Music Varwig and musicians from the Royal Academy of Music, including violinist Margaret Faultless and tenor Nicholas Mulroy, put this theory into practice in a two-day workshop centered on Bach's St John Passion. The goal was not to prepare a performance or recording but to create a space where musicians could let the music take them wherever they wanted it to. The result was a transformative experience that freed the musicians to inhabit the intensity of Bach's music, moving and breathing together in a shared humanity. The Future of Classical Music Varwig envisions a future where this level of physical and emotional engagement becomes the norm in the classical music world. She believes that by embracing embodied listening, classical music can become more immediate, connected, and transformative. As Faultless notes, 'We were incredibly attuned to our fellow performers and listeners in the room. We were free to inhabit the intensity of Bach's music, free to move, to breathe together and to respond to the power of the story through our shared humanity.'