Tonkunst
Tonkunst is today in the broadest sense a (rarely used) synonym for music . In the narrower sense, Tonkunst is an outdated expression in the German language for art music , which was often used in the 19th century in music history and music aesthetic representations. It probably arose out of the need to give music a place among the classical arts ( architecture , sculpture , painting , prose , poetry ) and also to recognize the composer (= sound artist ) as a creative individual. The expressions can be found, for example, on the inscriptions in the Walhalla, which was built in 1842 : there, for example, Joseph Haydn is titled as "Doctor of Music" and Beethoven as "Tondichter".
Today the term is rarely used, but lives on, for example, in the name of the Lower Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra .
In the same context, the term tone poem (not to be confused with symphonic poetry , although these two terms are often used synonymously) stood as an expression for a composition that had overcome the (lower) status of everyday music, was recognized as art music and additionally that was close to the noble ambience of poetry. For which works this came into question, however, was a matter of discretion. The same was true of the term tone poet, which gave the composer a special artistic status, quasi as a poet. In this context, composers were often awarded laurel wreaths at the time, analogous to the coronation of poets .
Other related expressions were sound creation , sound painting , sound painter (but see: sound painting ) and sound painting . The latter referred in particular to an associative or textually conditioned connection of visual and auditory sensory impressions. This is where the comparisons of doomsday frescoes with Dies-irae tones originated (see also: synaesthesia ).
The expression sound architecture , which was directly related to historicism and expressed itself in metaphorical formulations ("Bach's Gothic Dome" as a term for Bach's fugue compositions ), deserves special attention .