Music and Experience in the Eighteenth Century: Body, Emotions and Identities on the Tercentenary of Lluís Misón is a one-year precompetitive research project at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), awarded in the 2026 call (Ref. 2026PPCA58).

Throughout the eighteenth century, the ways in which music was understood, experienced and felt underwent profound transformations. The growing attention to the listener’s experience, new forms of sociability and sensibility, and the expansion of instrumental music opened up new avenues of musical signification and contributed to the shaping of modern forms of subjectivity and collective identity.

The project proposes to rethink these transformations by placing the body —including the mind, perception and experience— at the centre of the historical analysis of music. The project is structured around three axes —gesture, emotions and identities— which, although they have specific approaches, are addressed in an interconnected manner through the body as a constitutive dimension of musical experience:

  • Gesture is understood as a bodily dimension and a vehicle of musical and cultural signification. The project explores how it manifests itself and acquires meaning in different practices, from theatre and dance to instrumental performance, and how bodily movements and actions contribute to shaping musical experience.
  • Emotions are approached as embodied musical experiences, in relation to theories of the affects, transformations in sensibility, and new forms of listening in the eighteenth century. The project examines how musical discourses and practices articulate emotional expression and how we can understand these historical experiences from the perspective of the present.
  • Identities are conceived as historical and cultural configurations constructed and negotiated through musical practices. The project analyses how music participates in the representation of individual and collective identities —social, gender and protonational, among others— as well as in the construction of difference and alterity, including representations of marginalised bodies.

The three axes are explored through an interdisciplinary approach that brings historical musicology into dialogue with contemporary perspectives from fields such as semiotics and hermeneutics, as well as with performance practice and digital technologies. The project aims to develop theoretical, analytical and methodological tools to deepen our understanding of music as an embodied and situated experience, taking into account both the cultural frameworks of the past and the conceptual tools through which we can interpret them today.

In the context of the tercentenary of his birth, the work of Lluís Misón (1727–1766) constitutes the project’s privileged case study. This research has a precedent in the International Symposium Music and Theatre in the Hispanic Eighteenth Century around Lluís Misón, held in November 2016 and organised by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Mataró City Council, under the direction of Aurèlia Pessarrodona and Francesc Cortès. The symposium gave rise to the collective volume Estudios en torno a Luis Misón, edited by Aurèlia Pessarrodona and Germán Labrador and published in 2020 by Editorial Arpegio. That initiative contributed to promoting a historiographical reassessment of the composer and his musical legacy. The present project takes up this line of research and expands it with new perspectives on the relationships between body, emotions and identities, placing the study of Misón within a broader reflection on musical experience in the eighteenth century.

Misón’s stage output, particularly his tonadillas, and his instrumental music provide an opportunity to explore the relationships between embodiment, expression and identity in different musical contexts. Drawing on this repertoire and engaging with other European musical contexts, the project aims to test and develop the proposed conceptual and analytical tools.

Conceived as an exploratory project, this research seeks to establish the theoretical, methodological and analytical foundations for the development of a broader line of research into the relationship between music and the body from a historical perspective. At the same time, it aims to contribute to a renewed understanding of the musical heritage of the eighteenth century and to open up new avenues for the study of musical experience in the past.

Project information on the UAB Research Portal