‘Total art work’: term used by Wagner to signify his music dramas in which all the arts (music, poetry, movement, design) should combine to the same artistic end. The concept was not original to Wagner, but the term was.
| Music Encyclopedia: Gesamtkunstwerk |
‘Total art work’: term used by Wagner to signify his music dramas in which all the arts (music, poetry, movement, design) should combine to the same artistic end. The concept was not original to Wagner, but the term was.
| Album Review: Gesamtkunstwerk |
Similar Albums:




| Track Title | Composers | Performers | Time |
| Cellular Phone | Juan Atkins | Dopplereffekt | (4:37) |
| Technic 1200 | Dopplereffekt | (4:31) | |
| Scientist | Dopplereffekt | (4:13) | |
| Rocket Scientist | Dopplereffekt | (3:21) | |
| Master Organism | Dopplereffekt | (3:06) | |
| Satellites | Dopplereffekt | (2:49) | |
| Plastiphilia | Dopplereffekt | (1:02) | |
| Plastiphilia 2 | Dopplereffekt | (2:14) | |
| Voice Activated | Dopplereffekt | (4:07) | |
| Speak and Spell | Dopplereffekt | (4:27) | |
| Denki No Zuno | Dopplereffekt | (2:51) | |
| Radiometer | Dopplereffekt | (4:20) | |
| Pornoactress | Dopplereffekt | (2:24) | |
| Infophysix | Dopplereffekt | (3:52) | |
| Pornoviewer | Dopplereffekt | (2:30) | |
| Sterilization | Dopplereffekt | (2:30) | |
| Gesamtkunstwerk | Dopplereffekt | (6:07) |
| Wikipedia: Gesamtkunstwerk |
| Look up gesamtkunstwerk in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
A gesamtkunstwerk (often translated as universal artwork, synthesis of the arts, comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art form, total work of art, or total artwork [1]) is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term is originally German and is commonly used as such in English, but it is often also translated or explained at first mention. It is often capitalised as in German, where all nouns are capitalised, but it is always lowercased when used with an English plural ("gesamtkunstwerks").
The term was first used by the German writer and philosopher Eusebius Trahndorff in an essay in 1827. The German opera composer Richard Wagner first used the term in his 1849 essay Art and Revolution. It is unclear whether Wagner knew Trahndorff's essay.
Contents |
In 1849, Wagner described the Attic tragedy as the "great gesamtkunstwerk". Soon after, in The Artwork of the Future written in the same year, he expanded the meaning of the concept. In his extensive book Opera and Drama (completed in 1851) he described in detail his idea of the union of opera and drama (later called music drama despite Wagner's disapproval of the term), in which the individual arts are subordinated to a common purpose.
Wagner used the term "gesamtkunstwerk" to refer to a performance that combines all the arts, including the performing arts (for example music, theater, and dance), literature (including poetry), and the visual arts (for example painting, sculpture, and architecture). The gesamtkunstwerk was to be the clearest and most profound expression of a folk tale, though abstracted from its nationalist particulars to a universal humanist fable.
Wagner felt that the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus had been the finest (though still flawed) examples so far of total artistic synthesis, but that this synthesis had subsequently been corrupted by Euripides. Wagner felt that during the rest of human history up to the present day (i.e. 1850) the arts had drifted further and further apart, resulting in such 'monstrosities' as Grand Opera. Wagner felt that such works celebrated bravura singing, sensational stage effects, and meaningless plots.
Some elements of opera reform, seeking a more 'classical' formula, had begun at the end of the 18th century. After the lengthy domination of opera seria, and the da capo aria, a movement began to advance the librettist and the composer in relation to the singers, and to return the drama to a more intense and less moralistic focus. This movement, "reform opera" is primarily associated with Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi. The themes in the operas produced by Gluck's collaborations with Calzabigi continue throughout the operas of Carl Maria von Weber, until Wagner, rejecting both the Italian bel canto tradition and the French "spectacle opera", developed his union of music, drama, theatrical effects, and occasionally dance. However these trends had developed fortuitously, rather than in response to a specific philosophy of art; Wagner, who recognised the reforms of Gluck and admired the works of Weber, wished to consolidate his view, originally, as part of his radical social and political views of the late 1840s.
Paul Valéry[2] argued that museums might be examples of gesamtkunstwerks, as they combined both the visual arts being displayed, constant background music, the design of the building and the presentation of the works of art, and the necessary ambience of the public place in which the viewers found themselves. The group Dopplereffekt also used the title Gesamtkunstwerk for their 1999 album.
|
|||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Gesamtkunstwerk | |
| Epische Oper | |
| Famous Composers: Richard Wagner (1996 History Film) |
| How do you pronounce Gesamtkunstwerk? Read answer... |
Copyrights:
![]() | Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Album Review. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gesamtkunstwerk". Read more |
Mentioned in