Introduction: Theory and Practice of Somatic Music

This introductory article defines somatic music/ology as music that emphasises and reflects on its embodied nature and an associated theoretical discourse that addresses this aspect. It further traces the genealogy of this concept to the convergence of different intellectual and artistic currents from the mid twentieth century, including the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ecological psychology associated with James J. Gibson, performance- and body-oriented musicology represented by Roland Barthes and Carolyn Abbate and later developments such as 4E cognition as well as the experimental music theatre emerging from the 1960s. Finally, it introduces the various contri- butions to the issue.