Episode description

Bach's view of the body and how that comes through in his cantatas is being studied by violinist and contributor to Radio 3's Early Music Show, Mark Seow. He joins presenter Naomi Paxton and historians of medicine Alanna Skuse and Michelle Pfeffer, alongside evolutionary biochemist Nick Lane. Together they look at music, metaphors and the idea that vital bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) and links with five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) could regulate our health.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Alanna Skuse is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading. She has researched representations of self-wounding in plays, ballads, moral writings and medical texts from 1580-1740. Her first book is called Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England: Ravenous Natures and her second Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England.

Michelle Pfeffer is an early modern historian at Oxford with research interests in the history of science, religion, and scholarship in Europe. Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London.

Mark Seow is a violinist and academic who teaches at the University of Cambridge https://markseow.co.uk/about

Radio 3's Early Music Show is broadcast each Sunday afternoon at 2pm and available on BBC Sounds.

You can hear former Radio 3 controller Nicholas Kenyon exploring The Early Music Revolution in the Sunday Feature broadcasting on October 22nd.

Radio 3's weekly selection of Words and Music has a recent episode called Blow winds, blow.