This article outlines a number of potential contributions that a consideration of early eighteenth-century conceptions of musical expressivity might make to certain present-day philosophical and psychological accounts of musical emotions and their expression. Taking as its central case study a recent performance by Christian Gerhaher in Peter Sellars’ 2014 staging of Bach’s Passion according to St John, the article calls for closer attention to both the historical specifics of music’s expressive capacities and the corporeal dimension of performance (past and present). It argues that a more sustained engagement with these domains can productively complicate some fundamental assumptions that underpin current approaches to musical expression.