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Philosophical and aesthetic metaphor holding that "a work of art should possess unity in the same way, and to the same extent, that a living organism does ... Its most recent incarnation can be thought of as belonging quintessentially to the critical language of the late 18th and 19th centuries (Ruth Solie,"The living work: organicism and musical analysis," 19th-Century Music 4 (1980-1891), p. 147-156)