François Alexandre Nicolas Chéri Delsarte (19 November 1811 – 20 July 1871) was a French singer, orator, and coach. Though he achieved some success as a composer, he is chiefly known as a teacher in singing and declamation (oratory).

Applied aesthetics

Delsarte was born in

Solesmes, Nord Solesmes (; Picard: ''Solinmes'') is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. Heraldry Education The city is home to: * the École Saint-Joseph. * the ' Institution Saint Michel: Collège and Lycée', a Catholic Secondary Schoo ...

. He became a pupil at the

Paris Conservatory The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

, was for a time a

tenor A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is wide ...

in the

Opéra Comique ''Opéra comique'' (; plural: ''opéras comiques'') is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged from the popular '' opéras comiques en vaudevilles'' of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent (and to a l ...

, and composed a few songs. While studying singing at the Conservatoire, he became unsatisfied with what he felt were arbitrary methods for teaching acting. He began to study how humans moved, behaved and responded to various emotional and real-life situations. By observing people in real life and in public places of all kinds, he discovered certain patterns of expression, eventually called the Science of Applied Aesthetics. This consisted of a thorough examination of voice, breath, movement dynamics, encompassing all of the expressive elements of the human body. His hope was to develop an exact science of the physical expression of emotions, but he died before he had achieved his goals.

Delsarte System

Delsarte coached preachers, painters, singers, composers, orators and actors in the bodily expression of emotions. His goal was to help clients connect their inner emotional experience with the use of gesture. Delsarte categorized ideas related to how emotions are expressed physically in the body into various rules, ‘laws’ or ‘principles.’ These laws were organized by Delsarte in charts and diagrams. Delsarte did not teach systematically but rather through inspiration of the moment, and left behind no publications on his lessons. In America, Delsarte's theories were developed into what became known as the (American) Delsarte System.

Influence and impact

Delsarte's ideas were influential to the physical culture movement in the late 19th century. Delsarte intended his work for the

performing arts The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfo ...

, including the

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perfor ...

, and one of his many students (who also included

orator An orator, or oratist, is a public speaker, especially one who is eloquent or skilled. Etymology Recorded in English c. 1374, with a meaning of "one who pleads or argues for a cause", from Anglo-French ''oratour'', Old French ''orateur'' (14th ...

s and teachers) was

Sarah Bernhardt Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including ''La Dame Aux Cameli ...

. Delsarte never wrote a text explaining his method, and neither did his only protégé, the American actor

Steele MacKaye James Morrison Steele MacKaye ( ; June 6, 1842 – February 25, 1894) was an American playwright, actor, theater manager and inventor. Having acted, written, directed and produced numerous and popular plays and theatrical spectaculars of the day ...

, who brought his teacher's theories to America in lecture demonstrations he delivered in New York and Boston in 1871. However, MacKaye's student Genevieve Stebbins continued in their footsteps by developing a system of 'harmonic gymnastics', and in 1886 she published a book building on the foundation of Delsarte's theories titled ''The Delsarte System of Expression'', which became a major success with six editions (as well as numerous copycat publications). Stebbins also lectured extensively on Delsarte's theories, and displayed them (in conjunction with harmonic gymnastics) by statue-posing and performing so-called 'pantomimes' illustrating a poem, story or concept, thereby bringing Delsarte's work closer to dance. According to a contemporary description, Stebbins's statue poses, spiralling from head to toe, would "flow gracefully onward from the simple to complex... commencing with a simple

attitude Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value * Metaphysics of presence * Propositional attitude, a relational mental state connecting a person to a propo ...

, and continuing with a slow, rhythmic motion of every portion of the body." Although she did not describe herself as a dancer, from 1890 at the latest she started to perform actual dances as well as poses. There was a renewed interest in Delsartism in the 1890s in Europe. The principles of Delsarte were incorporated into

expressionist dance ''Expressive dance'' from German ''Ausdruckstanz'', is a form of artistic dance in which the individual and artistic presentation (and sometimes also processing) of feelings is an essential part. It emerged as a counter-movement to classi ...

and modern dance more generally through the influence of Isadora Duncan and the

Denishawn school The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional ...

of Ruth St. Denis and

Ted Shawn Ted Shawn (born Edwin Myers Shawn; October 21, 1891 – January 9, 1972) was a male pioneer of American modern dance. He created the Denishawn School together with his wife Ruth St. Denis. After their separation he created the all-male company T ...

. While St. Denis claimed a performance by Stebbins inspired her to dance, Shawn consciously embodied the Delsarte System in his work (and his book ''Every Little Movement'' (1954) is a key English-language text on the subject). As well as permeating the entire modern-dance movement in America, Delsartian influence may also be felt in German Tanztheater, through the work of Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman. Ironically, it was the great success of the Delsarte System that was also its undoing. By the 1890s, it was being taught everywhere, and not always in accordance with the emotional basis that Delsarte originally had in mind. No certification was needed to teach a course with the name Delsarte attached, and the study regressed into empty posing with little emotional truth behind it. Stephen Wangh concludes, "it led others into stereotyped and melodramatic gesticulation, devoid of the very heart that Delsarte had sought to restore."Wangh, Stephen. (2000). ''An Acrobat of the Heart: A Physical Approach to Acting Inspired by the Work of Jerzy Grotowski''. New York: Vintage Books. p. 32.

Family

Delsarte was the uncle of composer

Georges Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...

and grandfather of painter

Thérèse Geraldy Thérèse-Marie-Rosine Geraldy (18 June 1884 – 31 July 1965) was a French portrait artist. Life Born at Paris, Geraldy was the daughter of Louis Paul Lucien Geraldy, an artist, by his marriage to Marie-Anne-Elizabeth Delsarte, a drawing mistre ...

References

Notes

External links

* * *

(subscription)
Laban Biography and Method
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Delsarte, Francois 1811 births 1871 deaths French musicians Modern dance People associated with physical culture People from Nord (French department)