Glossary
Camerata Society
Florentine society of intellectuals, poets, and musicians, the first of several such groups that formed in the decades preceding 1600. The Camerata met about 1573–87 under the patronage of Count Giovanni Bardi. The group’s efforts to revive ancient Greek music— building on the work of the theorist Girolamo Mei—were an important factor in the evolution of monody, expressive solo song with simple chordal accompaniment. Leading members of the Camerata were the theorist Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer Galileo) and the composer Giulio Caccini. Slightly later groups further developed the new ideas to produce the first operas – From Encyclopaedia Brittanica
Episteme and Techne
Epistêmê is the Greek word most often translated as knowledge, while technê is translated as either craft or art. These translations, however, may inappropriately harbor some of our contemporary assumptions about the relation between theory (the domain of ‘knowledge’) and practice (the concern of ‘craft’ or ‘art’). Outside of modern science, there is sometimes skepticism about the relevance of theory to practice because it is thought that theory is conducted at so great a remove from reality, the province of practice, that it can lose touch with it. In fact, at the level of practice, concrete experience might be all we need. And within science, theory strives for a value-free view of reality. As a consequence, scientific theory cannot tell us how things should be — the realm of ‘art’ or ‘craft’ . So we must turn elsewhere for answers to the profound, but still practical, questions about how we should live our lives. However, some of the features of this contemporary distinction between theory and practice are not found in the relation between epistêmê and technê. As we move chronologically from Xenophon to Plotinus, we go from an author who does not distinguish between the two terms, to an author who has little use for technê because it is so far from reality. It is in Aristotle that we find the basis for something like the modern opposition between epistêmê as pure theory and technê as practice. Yet even Aristotle refers totechnê or craft as itself also epistêmê or knowledge because it is a practice grounded in an ‘account’ — something involving theoretical understanding [...] The relation, then, betweenepistêmê and technê in ancient philosophy offers an interesting contrast with our own notions about theory (pure knowledge) and (experience-based) practice. There is an intimate positive relationship between epistêmê andtechnê, as well as a fundamental contrast. – From Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
Gesamtkunstwerk
A gesamtkunstwerk (often translated as universal artwork, synthesis of the arts,comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art form, total work of art, or total artwork) 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 composer Richard Wagner first used the term in his 1849 essay Art and Revolution. It is unclear whether Wagner knew Trahndorff’s essay. – From Wikipedia
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is a German language expression translated as: Zeit, time; Geist, spirit, meaning “the spirit of the age and its society“. The word zeitgeist describes the intellectual, cultural, ethical and political climate, ambience and morals of an era (similar to the English word “mainstream”) or also a trend [...]
The concept of Zeitgeist [...] is best known in relation to Hegel’s philosophy of history. In 1769 Herder wrote a critique of the work Genius seculi by the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz and introduced the word Zeitgeist into German as a translation of genius seculi (Latin: genius – “guardian spirit” and saeculi – “of the century”) [...]
“Zeitgeist” refers to the ethos of an identified group of people, that expresses a particular world view which is prevalent at a particular period of socio-cultural progression.
Zeitgeist is the experience of a dominant cultural climate that defines, particularly in Hegelian thinking, an era in the dialectical progression of a people or the world at large. Hegel’s main contribution to the formulation of the concept of Volksgeist is the attribution of a historical character to the concept. The spirit of a nation is one of the manifestations of “World Spirit” (Weltgeist). That Spirit is essentially alive and active throughout mankind’s history. Now, the spirit of a nation is an intermediate stage of world history as the history of the World Spirit. The World Spirit gives impetus to the realization of the historical spirits of various nations (Volksgeister’). - From Wikipedia
