Music Physiology, Erotic Encounters, and Queer Reading Practices in Teleny

While music often appears as a “code” for sexual desire in Victorian literature, this article explores music's presence in a text for which no veiled language was needed: the anonymously published pornographic novella Teleny (1893). The authors of Teleny invoke emerging scientific discourses about music physiology to draw explicit parallels between musical and sexual encounters—as when the protagonist Camille orgasms in response to the vibrations of his lover's piano music. In such moments, Teleny offers an insistent defense of queer desire as a natural process rooted in the organic and often involuntary actions of the muscles and nerves—a particularly powerful intervention at a time when sexual “inversion” was most often denigrated as unnatural. In its use of biological science in the service of sexual representation—science that many twenty-first-century queer theorists might deem “essentialist”—Teleny presents a compelling challenge to scholars grappling with conversations about normativity, resistance, utopian desires, and idealized cultural objects.

Christoph Wagner (1931-2013): Father of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine in Germany

Born on 20 May 1931 in Marburg, Germany, Christoph Wagner grew up playing piano. In 1958, after finishing his studies in medicine and subsequent doctoral work, he followed his dream to study music. As he recognized the lack of objective knowledge in professional practicing and teaching, and as he noticed the spread of overuse syndromes, he decided to combine the two fields and to go new ways with scientific methods. His guiding principle was always science for musicians, not on musicians. Christoph Wagner died on 30 August 2013 at the age of 82 in Isernhagen, Germany.

Looking at Musicians' Health through the “Ages”

This month's editorial is based on a presentation that I did at the International Congress on Music Physiology and Musicians Medicine, which was held in Freiburg, Germany, in late March. Stimulated by some recent articles published in MPPA, I attempted to review what we know about the pattern of performance-related musculoskeletal disorders (PRMDs) among instrumental musicians over the lifespan. For the purposes of this review, I have not made any attempt to do a rigorous critique of the methods used in each study, but there are some key definitions and terminology that are relevant. Since even small differences in terminology can produce significant variation in the results, this adds to the difficulty of drawing conclusions from the studies published to date.

Musicians’ Cramp: Instrumental and Gender Differences

Musicians’ cramp is a disorder characterized by its task specificity and gender bias; male musicians have a higher prevalence of this disorder than females. Previous epidemiological studies on musicians’ cramp have demonstrated that certain instrumental groups are more prone to develop this disorder than others. These studies, however, have not accounted for the gender distribution in healthy musicians. Therefore, the current study investigated 2,661 healthy musicians collected from eight music conservatories within Germany. These controls were compared with 183 patients (154 males) with musicians’ cramp in an outpatient clinic at the Institute for Music Physiology and Music Medicine (IMMM), Hannover, Germany (1994-2000). Comparisons between groups (musicians’ cramp and controls) were made for gender and instrumental groups (keyboard, strings, woodwind, brass, plucking, and percussion). Results were consistent with earlier studies suggesting that particular instrumental groups were more at risk for developing musicians’ cramp than others. When gender was not a factor, both woodwind and plucking (guitar) instrumentalists were more likely to develop musicians’ cramp, while musicians playing string and percussion instruments were less likely to develop musicians’ cramp. Musicians playing keyboard and brass instruments were not significantly different than expected. When gender was included in the analyses, the following pattern was revealed: the number of male patients with musicians’ cramp was greater than expected, even when the number of healthy male musicians was accounted for; the opposite was found for female patients. Furthermore, when gender was also included in the instrumental analyses, male musicians were more likely to have musicians’ cramp than females in keyboard, string, woodwind, and plucking instruments. The only instrumental group without a gender bias for symptoms were the brass instruments. These results suggest that male musicians are more likely to develop musicians’ cramp within certain instrumental groups, and may reflect a general predisposition for male musicians to develop this disorder. The ages at onset of symptoms were not different between the males and females in this sample. The current study demonstrates a clear association between gender, instrumental groups, and the presentation of dystonic symptoms.