As the son of a well-known physician and himself an erstwhile medical student, Hector Berlioz avidly followed many of the medical and scientific debates of his day. Examining the system of neurophysiological affect emerging from his critical writing, Dr. Raz will focus on the composer’s engagement with contemporaneous neurophysiology, arguing that the medical literacy presented in his arguments reveals a hitherto neglected dimension of nineteenth-century engagement with the embodied effects of music.

Carmel Raz is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, leading a group entitled Histories of Music, Mind, and Body. From 2015-2018, she was a member of the Columbia Society of Fellows. Her research interests focus on the intertwined histories of music and cognition between 1650-1900.