Brown, Hilda Meldrum - The Quest for the Gesamtkunstwerk and Richard Wagner

This study examines the nature of the interdisciplinary procedures implicit in 'Gesamtkunstwerk' and suggests a new critical methodology to illuminate the processes and techniques which Wagner used as a bridge between dramatic text and music, thus creating a unique fusion of the major elements that constitute the 'total work of art'.

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CONTENTS

Introduction: The Nature of the Quest
Part I Approaches to the Gesamtkunstwerk before Wagner
1 The Landscape Garden
2 Romantic Drama and the Visual Arts
3 Goethe's Faust: Gesamtkunstwerk or Universaltheater?
Part II Wagner and the Gesamtkunstwerk: Moment and Motiv
4 Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Theoretical Approaches
5 Moment and Motiv: Critical Approaches to the Ring Cycle
6 Analysis of the Erda Scenes
Part III Wagner, the Gesamtkunstwerk, and Performance of the Ring
7 Adolphe Appia: A Watershed in the Evolution of the Gesamtkunstwerk
8 Wieland Wagner: The Appia Heritage and the Gesamtkunstwerk
9 The Centenary Ring: Deconstruction and the Gesamtkunstwerk
Conclusion
Appendix - The genesis of Goethe's Faust