Figure 1.--Germany has a wonderful tradition of family music making. Many German children began learning to play instruments from an early age. This portrait was taken at the Leopold Studio in Kronstadt and Purzengass.

Germany is perhaps more famed for music than any other country. Many of the most beloved classical compsers were German. The list is huge including Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Handel, Mendelson, Mozart, Strauss, and many other famed composers. Germany is a country of music. Not only has every sizable city an opera (Berlin has three opera houses) and a symphony orchestra, nearly every town has a brass band. It is wonderful to notice that many players in these bands are quite young. Then there are numerous choirs everywhere (no instruments required. except the human voice). There are now rock, pop, and metal bands or the more civilized dance orchestras. The German music tradition began to develop in the 16th century and is strongly related to the Reformation and the dynamics of the Holy Roman Empire as it emerged from the medieval period.

Martin Luther

Luther is of course best known for launching the Reformation. This alone makes him one of the most important figures in history. And this does not just mean among Protestants. The Reformation along with the Renaissance and Rnlightement was one of the central steps in the forging of Western Civilization--essentially modernity. But this was not Luther' only contribution. He also played an important role in the development of Western music. Before Luther Germany (atually the German states) was just ome of several European nations. After Luther Germany became central to Western music. The three B's (Betoven, Bach, and Brahams) not to mention Mozart are at the hear of Western music, but they are only a of a host of German compossers. The primacy of Germany in music is undeniable and it all began with Luther. Music was used in Catholic services for centuries. During Medieval era it was priests or a choir of monks including boys training for the priethood. Luther loved music and he wanted it to be at center of the Mass, but he favored the congregational singing of the early church. For that to be the case , servies including the singing had to be done in German, not Latin. He wanted the entire congregation to participate in services through singing. Larger congregations at first kept agood bit of the Latin liturgy. Smaller churches, however, began using Luther's Deudsche Messe. The chorle and cantrafacta became important, but soon polyphonic chorale settings appared, especially in Germany. A German theological professor describes luther's views. "Also music and painting are in God's service. Praying was Luther's most important engagement, but he visited imperturbably a religeous service, listened to the sermon, received the Lord's Supper (communion ), sang religeous songs and read the bible. Also the music and the pictures could very well be seen and heard in God's service unlike the Swiss reformators Luther lived a pious lifeand he wanted to encourage the Evangelical Christians to become more devout. But how do you become pious? It could be taught. That's why Luther used his catechisms. Only Belief is important and sets people free and right.Believing is a gift from God , which we always can ask for prayer." [Jung]

Composers

Germany is perhaps more famed for music than any other country. Many of the most beloved classical compsers were German. The list is huge including Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Handel, Mendelson, Mozart, Strauss, and many other famed composers. Germany had some of the most important composers in the history of music. Bach who mixed different styles of music from North Gemany , Denmark, and Flanders on one part and italian Music on the other part. Bach was an open-minded Lutheran and this aspect is mostly visible in his Cantatas and Passions. It was the same with Mozart and Haydn who mixed different styles to create new ones. For example, Mozart was the first to create operas in German instead of Italian while Haydn created the symphony in four movements and also gave a great impulse to strings quartet. No doubt that in the 18th century German music was a leader in Europe. This country where every family practised any musical instrument gave birth to Beethoven who influenced music everywhere in the world. At the turn of the 19th Century, he composed a symphony called "Eroica" he dedicated first to Napoleon Bonaparte, who he saw as a leader able to break down Absolute Monarchy in Europe, as it was with the Royalty in France. But Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, a new Charlemagne. He also contribute to the weakeniong of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He married the archduchess (princess) Marie-Louise, the daughter of Emperor Franz-Joseph. Beethoven refused to dedicate his symphony to a new emperor who would not be different than the old regime monarchs. There is something in this Third Symphony as a collapse which expresses something like the death of Medieval values and the rise of new ones: Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality which came from the French Revolution. Beethoven gave to music this freedom which was unknown during the previous century. His 'Ode to the Joy' is a good exemple of this. Beethoven is a preview of all the music of the coming 19th century. Romanticism with Brahms, Chopin, Mendelsohn, Schumann are the end result of his musial experiments. Wagner operas, mainly the 'Ring of the Nibelungen' and 'Parsifal,' gave to music a new status in pushing melody to its finest refinements. Even if Brukner or Malher gave to the symphony something similar to Wagner's operas, there was a feeling that nothing more could be done to creativeness in music. Take note that in visual arts , the same thing happened with Impressionism. Gradually, painting ceased to be a copy of external reality. The next move came from France. Debussy and Ravel initiated a new kind of music based on foreign countries like Balinese music. Also, those composers returned to some classical composers like Couperin and Rameau. Many people thought that this music would be the right answer to the diktat of German Music. But there was two new impulses which would shatter the Western World and this, just a few years before World War I. Those movements will influence greatly and was fought with an equal fierceness during the Third Reich. Let take as granted that art is a mirror of the evolving society and that any dishonest lying society will always fight against truth.

Music Making

Germany is a country of music. Not only has every sizable city an opera (Berlin has three opera houses) and a symphony orchestra, nearly every town has a brass band. It is wonderful to notice that many players in these bands are quite young. There is everywhere a strong tradition of (classical and modern serious) music in families, schools, towns. There are three opera houses in Berlin (state funded, the politicians try to reduce the number), two in Hamburg, three in Munich. It is a fact that every middle to larger size German city has an opera house. A German reader tells us, "In the region where I am living (around Frankfurt), in a circle of about 30 miles, there are four opera houses, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Wiesbaden, Mainz (all state and community funded), with mostly sold out performances every day during the season. There is an additional, privately funded company in Frankfurt (they have no daily performances as the state-funded do). Classical concerts are given often everywhere. The concert hall "Alte Oper" (rebuilt after World War II as a concert hall) in Frankfurt belongs to the world-famous halls, about 2,500 seats, very often sold out. Darmstadt where I live has two concert performances every month in our opera house with the opera orchestra; we have about five concert groups, partially professional musicians, partial laymen and privately funded, in this town with 120 000 population. Not to count the church chorusses and the school orchestras. There is a music academy where children and teenager may learn and study playing music instruments. Darmstadt is world famous for the "Tage der Neuen Musik" ("Days of New Music") where students from around all the world come in summer for two weeks together and meet composers of new music; last month (Kuly 2010) there was a performance with five recent compositions, worlds's first public performances. A reader points out, "Lots of American singers have found employment there, something they cannot find at home in the USA (not every aspirant singer is going to be engaged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York). Not all provincial German opera houses are at a Metropolitan level, but it does show that musical life in Germany is flourishing. That also is the case with symphony orchestras. They are everywhere. But the Berlin one is considered to be one of the best in the world thanks to Herbert von Karajan. In smaller cities and villages one always finds a choir and a brass band. I don't know anything about pop or heavy metal, but I am sure that also in Germany they are beating the young people into deafness, like anywhere else.

Choirs

Then there are numerous choirs everywhere (no instruments required. except the human voice).

Popular Music

There are now rock, pop, and metal bands or the more civilized dance orchestras.

German Influence

The music history in and around Germany in the past and in present days is enormous. The modern European music tradition centers on Germamy and began to develop with the Reformation out of the Holy Roman Empire which was centered on Germany, but affected all of central Europe (Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakisa) and much of Eastern Europe, especially Poland. The Germany influence extended east to Russia as well as Scandanavia, Western Europe, and America. A Dutch reader writes, "Holland absorbed many German composers and music teachers, among others Johann Wilhelm Wilms (1772-1847), who composed the Dutch national anthem 'Wien Neerlands Bloed' that was sung since 1815 at all official events until it got replaced by 'Wilhelmus van Nassouwe' (1898). Many of the songs we sung at school when I was a boy were in fact German melodies. The Dutch considered Johann Sebastian Bach one of their own with all his organ music, cantatas and especially St.Matthew Passion that traditionally was performed in a church in Naarden and that appealed to the Dutch Calvinistic taste. The famous Dutch conductor, Willem Mengelberg, who build up the Concertgebouw Orchestra, was instrumental in promoting the Austrian Jewish composer Gustav Mahler but turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer. He gave many concerts during the war for a largely German military and Dutch nazi audience. Mengelberg died in exile in Switzerland and was not allowed to return to Holland. Mengelberg's parents were Germans." Other national anthems were also composed by German composers like the one from Finland that was created by Hamburg-born Friedrich Pacius (1809-1891), the same thing happened in Hungary with their national anthem, composed by Franz Erkel (1910-1893) of Danube-Swabian descent like Franz Liszt. Chopin's first music teacher was Joseph Elsner, a German. Several British composers were of German descent: Frederick Delius, Gustav Holst and Eugen d'Albert (the latter went to live in Germany and became a German citizen). The greatest English composer was George Frederick (Georg Friederich) Händel. Other countries also had composers of German extraction like France with Jacques Offenbach and César Franck, who was born in a region of Belgium where they speak German. Franck always prayed the Lord's Prayer in German. German-Italian composers were Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) and Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) who had a German mother. He moved to Berlin and composed and wrote articles about musical topics in German. The influence on America was particularly profound, in part because of the extensive German immigratio. Most symphony orchestras were founded and conducted by Germans.

Sources

Jung, Martin. Zuerst Professor für evangelische Theologie an der Universität in Osnabrück. This is the German text which we have tried to translate. "Auch Musik und Bilder stehen im Dienste Gottes Das Gebet war für Luther das Wichtigste, aber unabdingbar gehörte für ihn zum frommen Leben auch der Besuch des Gottesdienstes, das Hören der Predigt, der Empfang des Abendmahls, der Gesang kirchlicher Lieder und das Lesen der Bibel. Ebenfalls konnten für ihn die Musik und die Bilder, anders als für die Schweizer Reformatoren, weiter im Dienste Gottes stehen. Luther führte ein frommes Leben und wollte die evangelischen Christen zu einem frommen Leben anleiten. Aber wie wird man fromm? Frömmigkeit kann man und muss man lernen und üben. Deswegen verfasste Luther auch seine Katechismen. Aber die Grundlage für jedes fromme Leben bildet der Glaube, auf den alles ankommt und von dem alles abhängt. Allein der Glaube macht den Menschen fromm, frei, selig, gerecht. Und der Glaube ist ein Geschenk Gottes, um das man Gott allerdings bitten kann und soll – im Gebet."

Created: 8:36 AM 8/17/2010
Last updated: 4:32 AM 7/8/2016