An abrupt holiday within the winning modes of inventive expression, for plenty of, marks the appearance of modernism within the early 20th century, yet revisionary makes an attempt to pin down an actual second of its emergence stay disputed. History of a Shiver proffers a special method, tracing the 1st inkling of modernism in its place to the 19th century's fascination with music.

As Jed Rasula deftly indicates, melomania--the ardour for music--gave upward push to strategies like Richard Wagner's "endless melody" and the Gesamtkunstwerk, or overall murals, which in flip infused the humanities of the fin de siècle with an air of mystery of expectancy, hard them to urge musical results through their very own skill. With every one artwork intending to produce the results of one other creative medium, a synesthetic craving ran like a shiver in the course of the physique of artwork that might emerge over the following part century. Rasula lines this pan-arts polyphony from German Romantic conception to early experiments in "visual music," encompassing such different phenomena as American fixation on Arcadia, early movie concept, and the entice of the fourth measurement. the entire whereas, he retains concentrate on the paramount historic outcome in raising track to a brand new common aesthetic regular, arguing that Wagnerism used to be first between sleek "isms."

In surveying this momentous interaction between arts, History of a Shiver levels from literature, song and portray to theatre, cinema, dance, images, and civic pageantry. It retells the tale of modernism through improving no longer an idea, yet a feeling--the hair-raising capability for every portray, literary textual content, or musical composition to bring in an exceptional area of human enterprise.