Rehearsing Restraint

Abstract

This chapter analyses the structure of the rehearsal process to reveal norms of bodily practice that can be linked to theorizations of how white identities are embodied. This analysis also reveals a contradiction: the body is required to be present in order to create sound but is at the same time effaced or transcended. The mechanisms through which this occurs included ‘controlled excitement’: cultivating strong emotions but always keeping them under control. This was both an aesthetic quality and a social disposition that was cultivated within classical music practice. This disposition was drawn on in rehearsals in ways that highlighted apparently disembodied qualities in European music while bodily presence was emphasized in non-European music. This mode of embodiment maps onto a raced, classed, and gendered hierarchy of value in which women and non-white others are associated with the bodily and white men with the cognitive.