Gebrauchsmusik

Use music refers, must be subordinate to a social context. The term is common since the 1920s.

Term

Perhaps the ethnomusicologist Paul Nettl mentioned him for the first time. Heinrich Besseler grabbed him and used it for commercial music. - It only makes sense to speak of Use music if there something else out there in the musical field: The opposite of utility music is the autonomous music (or the Absolute music). The composer Paul Hindemith was one of the most prominent representatives of utility music from the camp of serious contemporary music. Music has to adapt to the circumstances and should not serve solely for artistic self- satisfaction of the composer. In the Anglo -Saxon press, the German term emerged in the early 1930s on:

" In Holyell music room set children [ ... ] use the new music before, which is used extensively in Germany in education. The children perform Hindemith, we'll build a city on '. "

Social context

In the European tradition, there are the following framework for music:

• Church (music in worship )
• Chamber ( background music for aristocratic card game )
• (Opera and theater music in the theater )
• Ballroom and dance floor ( musical accompaniment of the dance company )

Since there is this social framework, so since about the 17th century, composers and musicians increasingly emancipated from its local function. The public concert hall since the 18th century ( first in London ) for liberating goal of the professional musician ( as for Joseph Haydn, who was able to free himself with his London performances from serving existence of a court musician ).

Today's use of music is part of music production in the music industry and is the concert music and absolute music (see popular music ) economically superior. In modern use music the musicians are obviously no longer " slaves " because they do not have to play live. So it's only the music and not the musicians who may face non-compliance. Precursors of these use music were the music in the ballroom and in the theater where even chapels were present. This is now comparable with disco and cinema. Due to the possibility of the electronic record new types of music have emerged as Muzak use as background music.

Background

The philosopher Plato distinguished between the producing, the end -use and the imitative arts ( Politeia ). An instrument maker is after his example, a generating and a flautist use a visual artist ( which in turn should produce something that could what you use ). When he had the " use " an ethical value and made things and people not the impersonal object. - But in the 19th century was the requirement that it should be possible for man to realize himself as an individual outside of functionalization, as a counterweight to the increasing integration of the workforce in technical and bureaucratic organization of procedures in the wake of urbanization and industrialization.

At the beginning of the 19th century musicians were admired, the out broke away from its social context. The violinist Louis Spohr reported in his autobiography that he had insisted for his chamber music concert at the Stuttgarter Hof ( 1800 ), that the court society during his lecture the gambling tables and cards wegräume. Because the king held to this requirement, the public concert Spohr had great popularity on the following day.

With the development of civil society, a wide variety of new demand for use of music emerged (dance ball, Music Hall, later, film music, etc.). This was the initial opposition of the bourgeoisie against a " utility music " of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities and its solidarity with the opposing musicians who wanted to be no more servants, no longer exists. The " use " lost smacks of a slavery of the nobility and the church, out of which about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had solved his urge for self-employment.