The Total Work of Art: Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations

Published by Berghahn Books 2016

The Total Work of Art

Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations

Edited by: David Imhoof , Margaret Eleanor Menninger and Anthony J. Steinhoff

Volume 12 in the series Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781785331855

Overview
Contents

About this book

For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk’s lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.

Author / Editor information

David Imhoof is Professor of History at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Bloomsbury Press recently published his textbook So, About Modern Europe: A Conversational History from the Enlightenment to the Present. He is the author of Becoming a Nazi Town (Michigan, 2013) and co-editor of a special edition of Colloquia Germanica (2016) on sound studies. He is currently writing a history of the German record industry. Imhoof also directs the Music and Sound Studies Network for the German Studies Association.

Margaret Eleanor Menninger is Associate Professor of History at Texas State University and Executive Director of the German Studies Association. She has published on the history of cultural philanthropy in both the United States and Germany and was a contributor to The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia. Her forthcoming book is entitled A Serious Matter and True Joy: Philanthropy, the Arts, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Leipzig.

Anthony J. Steinhoff is Associate Professor of History at the Université du Québec à Montréal. A specialist in modern German and French cultural and social history, he is the author of The Gods of the City: Protestantism and Religious Culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914 (Brill, 2008) and the translator of Rita Kuczynski’s Mauerblume: Ein Leben auf der Grenze (Wall Flower: A Life on the German Border; University of Toronto Press, 2015). He is currently writing a cultural history of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and operatic culture in German-speaking Europe in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

David Imhoof is Professor of History at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Bloomsbury Press recently published his textbook So, About Modern Europe: A Conversational History from the Enlightenment to the Present. He is the author of Becoming a Nazi Town (Michigan, 2013) and co-editor of a special edition of Colloquia Germanica (2016) on sound studies. He is currently writing a history of the German record industry. Imhoof also directs the Music and Sound Studies Network for the German Studies Association.

Reviews

“Contributors are deft in negotiating and teasing out how aspects of the Gesamtkunstwerk shaped the German cultural landscape and at the same time mirrored the changing nature of politics and consumerism. This collection will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians interested in all aspects of German culture.” • Choice

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
TABLES Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
FOREWORD Celia Applegate Publicly Available Download PDF	x
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiv
INTRODUCTION Margaret Eleanor Menninger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I Foundations
CHAPTER 1 The Play’s the Thing Schiller, Wagner, and Gesamtkunstwerk Nicholas Vazsonyi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
CHAPTER 2 From Gesamtkunstwerk to Music Drama Sanna Pederson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER 3 Richard Wagner, Parsifal, and the Pursuit of Gesamtkunstwerk Anthony J. Steinhoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
II Articulations
CHAPTER 4 Epic Gesamtkunstwerk Joy H. Calico Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
CHAPTER 5 Gesamtkunstwerk, Gestaltung, and the Bauhaus Stage Melissa Trimingham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
CHAPTER 6 Exposing the Political Gesamtkunstwerk: Hanns Eisler’s Nuit et Brouillard Amy Lynn Wlodarski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
CHAPTER 7 Reconciling the “Three Graceful Hellenic Sisters” Wagner, Dance, and Song-Ballets Set to Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder Wayne Heisler Jr. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
III Inspirations
CHAPTER 8 The “Translucent (Not: Transparent)” Gesamtglaswerk Jenny Anger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
CHAPTER 9 Quiet Audience, Roaring Crowd: The Aesthetics of Sound and the Traces of Bayreuth in Kuhle Wampe and Triumph of the Will Theodore F. Rippey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
CHAPTER 10 The Will to Heal: Gesamtkunstwerk and Memorial Music since 1945 Julia Goodwin and Margaret Eleanor Menninger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
CHAPTER 11 Consuming Voices: Musical Film and the Gesamtkunstwerk of Mass Culture David Imhoof Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	228
AFTERWORD Gesamtkunstwerk as Epistemic Space Kevin S. Amidon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Select Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 300
Keywords: History (General); Cultural Studies (General); Performance Studies

eBook

Published: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 9781785331855