Michael Weinstein-Reiman

The Art of Touch: Musical Learning, Keyboards, and the Modern Self

The Art of Touch: Musical Learning, Keyboards, and the Modern Self offers a pioneering musicological exploration into the intricate concept of touch, tracing its evolution from the Baroque period to the early twentieth century. This work delves into the profound ways touch has shaped musical pedagogy and modernity, posing critical inquiries into performers’ and composers’ perceptions of touch. It reveals how Enlightenment and Romantic intellectuals, often with limited musical backgrounds, employed the keyboard as a metaphor to theorize modern subjectivity, bridging the material and the ideal. By intertwining touch with the mind-body continuum, aesthetics, and social sciences, this book underscores the keyboard’s pivotal role in defining the modern self and its potential for intellectual and cultural advancement. Through this lens, the keyboard emerges as a symbol of progress, embodying the dynamic interplay between knowledge, art, and human experience.

Michael Weinstein-Reiman is a historian of music theory whose work examines how musical thought intersects with broader intellectual, cultural, and pedagogical traditions. His research spans eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European philosophy, music education, literature, gender and sexuality, and disability studies. He earned his Ph.D. in Music Theory from Columbia University in 2021, where his work was supported by Columbia’s Dean’s Fellowship, the Georges Lurcy Foundation, and the French Embassy’s Chateaubriand Fellowship.