20th-21st Century: German Music, Theatre & Dance

 

German music are famous and  considered to be the third largest in the world and the largest music market in Europe and to have the most renowned composers, producers and performers from the world. German popular music of the 20th and 21st century includes the movements of Neue Deutsche Welle (Nena, Alphaville), Disco (Boney M., Dschinghis Khan, Milli Vanilli), Ostrock (City, Keimzeit), Metal/Rock (Rammstein, Scorpions), Punk (Die Ärzte, Die Toten Hosen), Pop rock (Beatsteaks, Tokio Hotel), Indie (Tocotronic, Blumfeld) and Hip Hop (Die Fantastischen Vier, Deichkind). German Electronic music achieved global influence, with Kraftwerk being a pioneer group and the Minimal and Techno scenes in Germany being very popular. Germany hosts many large rock music festivals annually. The Rock am Ring festival is the largest music festival in Germany. The first half of 20th century was 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’s "Carmina Burana" was and remains hugely popular. Many composers immigrated 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. Some figures such as Karl Amadeus Hartmann remained defiantly in Germany during the years of Nazi dominance, continually watchful of how their output might be interpreted by the authorities. In West Germany, the second half of the 20th century, German and Austrian music was largely dominated by the avant-garde. During the 60s and 70s, the Darmstadt New Music Summer School was a major center of European modernism; German composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Werner Henze and non-German ones such as Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio all studied there. In contrast, composers in East Germany were advised to avoid the avant-garde and to compose music in keeping with the tenets of Socialist Realism. Music written in this style was supposed to advance party politics as well as be more accessible to all. Hanns Eisler and Ernst Hermann Meyer were among the most famous of the first generation of GDR composers.