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Music of Germany
Chanson, Breton fest-noz and bagad pipe bands, Alpine yodel and Schrammelmusik, Flemish and Dutch folk, accordion musette.
Sung and searched in German. The YouTube button above can run your search in that language.
A brief history
Early popular music
Between World War I and World War II, German music branched out to form new, more liberal and independent styles.
The first form of German pop music is said to be cabaret, which arose during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s as the sensual music of late-night clubs. Marlene Dietrich and Margo Lion were among the most famous performers of the period, and became associated with both humorous satire and liberal ideas.
The strict regimentation of youth culture in Nazi Germany through the Hitler Youth led to the emergence of several underground protest movements, through which adolescents were able better to exert their independence. One of these consisted mainly of upper middle class youths, who based their protest on their musical preferences, rejecting the völkisch music propagated by the Party in place of American jazz forms, especially Swing.
Popular music
20th century
The first half of 20th century saw a split between German and Austrian music. In Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern moved along an increasingly avant-garde path, pioneering atonal music in 1909 and twelve-tone music in 1923. Meanwhile, composers in Berlin took a more populist route, from the cabaret-like socialist operas of Kurt Weill to the Gebrauchsmusik of Paul Hindemith. In Munich there was also Carl Orff, who was influenced by the French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. He began to use colorful, unusual combinations of instruments in his orchestration. His most popular work is Carmina Burana. Many composers emigrated to the United States when the Nazi Party came to power, including Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Erich Korngold. During this period, the Nazi Party embarked on a campaign to rid Germany of so-called degenerate art, which became a catch-all phrase that included music with any link to Jews, Communists, jazz, and anything else thought to be dangerous.
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