Music of Germany 3
(from Wikipedia and from me *lol*)
Part 3:

Neue deutsche Welle:

Neue Deutsche Welle is an outgrowth of British punk rock and New Wave which appeared in the mid-to late 1970s. It was the first successful unique German music but was limited in its stylistic devices (funny lyrics and surreal composition and production). Though it was a huge success in Germany itself in the 1980s, this was not long-lasting mostly due to over-commercialization. Some artists became famous internationally:


(Nena)

* Nena
* Falco (from Austria)
* Joachim Witt (One of the biggest names from the Neue Deutsche Welle)


(Falco)

Popular Solo artists:

In the 1980s most German-language popular music was sung by male solo artists. Here are few very popular singers:

* Udo Lindenberg
* Herbert Grönemeyer
* Marius Müller-Westernhagen
* Peter Maffay


(Herbert Grönemeyer)

Only Grönemeyer has managed to maintain his success up to today. Maffay developed from Schlager to rock and has a large but delimited fan base - he is seldom played on the radio.

Hamburger Schule:

Hamburger Schule (School of Hamburg) is an underground music-movement that started in the late 1980s and was still active till around the mid 1990s. It has similar traditions as Neue Deutsche Welle and mixed all that with punk, grunge and experimental pop music. Hamburger Schule has been an important part of Germany's youth and gave the term "Pop" a new definition, as now it was "ok" (or "cool") to sing in the German language. Hamburger Schule also includes intellectual lyrics with postmodern theories and social criticism. Important artists are:

(Die Welt ist schön - Blumfeld)

* Blumfeld
* Die Sterne
* Tocotronic

Ostrock (Eastrock):

By the early 1970s, experimental West German rock styles had crossed the border into East Germany and influenced the creation of an East German rock movement referred to as Ostrock. On the other side of the Wall, these bands tended to be stylistically more conservative than in the West, to have more reserved engineering, and often to include more classical and traditional structures (such as those developed by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in their 1920s Berlin theater songs). These groups often featured poetic lyrics loaded with indirect double-meanings and deeply philosophical challenges to the status quo. As such, they were a style of Krautrock. The best-known of these bands were:

* The Puhdys
* Karat
* City
* Silly


(Silly)

Only a few individual songs, such as "Am Fenster" by City and "Über sieben Brücken mußt Du geh'n" by Karat, found wide popularity outside the GDR.

There was also a wide diversity of underground bands. Out of this scene later grew the internationally successful band Rammstein (see Neue Deutsche Härte below).

New German Popular music:

In the 1990s, German language groups had only limited popularity, and only a few artists managed to be played on the radio, for example Rammstein, Rosenstolz or Die Prinzen.

This changed in 2002 with the success of Wir sind Helden, a German band with a new musical self-confidence. This success was followed by several other bands and a broader acceptance of existing German-language recording artists, such as:

* Sportfreunde Stiller (already before 2002)
* Juli
* Silbermond
* Annett Louisan

Hip Hop:

Outside of the United States, Germany generates the most sales for recorded hip hop, and has one of the more vibrant scenes in the world. Hip hop arrived in the early 1980s, and graffiti art and breakdancing became well-known quickly, with hip hop crews appearing soon thereafter.

The huge commercial success started in 1992 with the hit "Die Da" from Die Fantastischen Vier from Stuttgart. This band makes rather funny and sophisticated hip hop. The Rödelheim Hartreim Projekt tried to establish a more USA-like "gangster" rap. An early major influent group was Advanced Chemistry including Torch.

Whereas hip hop had a peak of success in the early 2000s, with bands from Hamburg dominating the scene, gangster rap became an important and controversial part of German music and youth culture just as late as 2004 with Aggro Berlin.

(Ave Maria, Live! - In Extremo)

Metal:

Germany is known as the European centre of heavy metal. Though not as popular as in scandinavian countries, the far larger populace of germany (more than three times) make it a major market for metal music. The Rhein-Ruhr Area was and is the birthplace of internationally famous thrash metal bands like Kreator and Sodom; along with Hamburg, which was home of much German speed metal Bands in the 1980s who should develop into Power Metal in the 1990s. Hannover was the starting city for the worldwide rock legends The Scorpions. Death metal bands are mainly located in northern Germany, especially in Lower Saxony (Oscenity, Anasarca) and since the late 1990s also in the Rheinland (Necrophagist, Pavor), were Wermelskirchen is a centre of a huge death metal/grindcore community. Black metal is very popular in East Germany, especially Thuringia, but can be found in nearly all parts of Germany, since it gained more popularity in the early 2000s through the Internet and, of course, the German band Nargaroth who created the infamous song "Black Metal ist Krieg". Southern Germany and especially Bavaria became a centre of Viking metal, with bands like Equilibrium and Kromlek, mostly influenced by bands such like Finntroll and play a more "folky" happy style of the music, in opposition to the more grim and Black Metal influenced Pagan metal Bands, mostly from East Germany. The "metal-centre" of Germany is still the Rhein-Ruhr Area, where also Metalcore reached high popularity. Here can be found bands of every substyle, from brutal death metal to pagan metal Industrial metal is also something that Germany can be famous for, with such bands as Rammstein and The Seven Seals. Also, Medieval metal is gaining ground in the United States with the help of bands like In Extremo and Subway to Sally.


(Megaherz)

Neue deutsche Härte:

Neue Deusche Härte (engl. "New German Hardness") is a style of Rock music. It combines the common sound of metal with electronic samples and is mostly sung with German lyrics. It draws its audience mainly from the metal and goth scene, although some bands like Rammstein or Oomph! have gained mainstream success. Other famous artists include Megaherz. Unheilig or Joachim Witt.

Thanx my friends
~U-ne-ga-wa-ya~

Music of Germany 2
(from Wikipedia and from me *lol*)
Part 2:

Early Popular Music:


(Marlene Dietrich)

Cabaret:

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. "Wenn die beste Freundin" (1928) was an early lesbian-themed song.

Post-War Popular Music:

After World War II, German Pop Music was much influenced by music from USA and Great Britain. Apart from Schlager and Liedermacher, it is necessary to distinguish between Pop Music in West Germany and Pop Music in East Germany which developed in different directions. Pop Music from West Germany was often heard in East Germany, had more variety and is still present today, while East German music had only little influence.

In West Germany, English-language Pop Music became more and more important, and today most songs on the radio are English. Nevertheless there is a big diversity of German language Pop Music. There is also English-language Pop Music from Germany, some having international success (for instance The Scorpions), but little with enduring broad success in Germany itself. There was hardly any English Pop music from East Germany.

Germany has also had a thriving English-language pop scene since the end of the war, with several European and American acts topping the charts. However, Germans and German-oriented musicians have been successful as well. In the 1990s and 2000s such European Pop acts were popular as well as artists like Sarah Connor, Marc Terenzi, No Angels, Monrose, and US5 all who performed various types of mainstream pop in English. Many of these acts have had success all over Europe and Asia as well, although few have cracked the American market.

Schlager and Volksmusik:

Schlager is a kind of vocal pop music, frequently in the form of sentimental ballads sung in German but there's also a wide range of mood songs among those styles (Modern Schlager, Schlager-Gold, Volksmusik resp. "volkstümlicher Schlager"). Schlager/Volksmusik is strictly separated from international pop music and is only played on special format radio stations (sometimes mixed with international Evergreens)

An important part of Schlager is volkstümliche Musik, a Schlager-like interpretation of traditional German folk themes that is very popular in German speaking countries, especially among the older generation.

Liedermacher


(Konstantin Wecker)

Liedermacher (Songwriter) has sophisticated lyrics and is sung with minimal instrumentation, for instance only with acoustic guitar. Some songs are very political in nature. This is related to American Folk/Americana and French Chanson styles.

Famous West German Liedermacher are Reinhard Mey, Hannes Wader and Konstantin Wecker. Famous East German Liedermacher are Gerhard Schöne and Barbara Thalheim.

Very popular in Germany also is Herman van Veen from the Netherlands.

Most Liedermacher artists also record special albums for children.

Rock:

Genuine German rock first appeared around 1968, just as the hippie countercultural explosion was peaking in the US and UK. At the time, the German musical avant-garde had been experimenting with electronic music for more than a decade, and the first German rock bands fused psychedelic rock from abroad with electronic sounds. The next few years saw the formation of a group of bands that came to be known as krautrock or Kosmische Musik groups; these included Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Can, Neu! and Faust.

German Rock had become a very popular kind of German music. Many people were impacted on Germany's great rock, so there were more and more fans excited to hear the sounds of this music. Before that development rock music in Germany was a negligible part of the schlager genre covered by interprets like Peter Kraus and Ted Herold who used to play Rock-n-Roll standards by Little Richard or Bill Haley, sometimes translated into German language.


(Tangerine Dream)

A great impact on German postwar culture had the US military radio station American Forces Network (AFN) which was formative for the further development of the German rock and jazz culture. Bill Ramsey who appeared to be senior producer of AFN Frankfurt in 1953 later rose to a famous career as jazz and (later) Schlager singer in Germany while he remained almost unknown in his country of origin (from Ohio, USA).

Thanx my friends
~U-ne-ga-wa-ya~

Music of Germany
(from Wikipedia and from me *lol*)
Part 1:

Forms of German-language music include Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), Krautrock, Hamburger Schule, Volksmusik, German hip hop, Schlager and multiple varieties of folk music. Classical composers include Richard Wagner and Johann Sebastian Bach, while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was among many opera composers who created the field of German opera.

The beginning of what is now considered German music could be traced back to the 12th century compositions of mystic abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote a variety of hymns and other kinds of Christian music.

Minnesingers and Meistersingers:



After Latin-language religious music had dominated for centuries, in the 12th century to the 14th centuries, minnesingers (love poets), singing in German, spread across Germany. Minnesingers were aristocrats traveling from court to court who had become musicians, and their work left behind a vast body of literature, Minnelieder. The following two centuries saw the minnesingers replaced by middle-class meistersingers, who were often master craftsmen in their main profession, whose music (meistergesang) was much more formalized and rule-based than that of the minnesingers. Minnesingers and meistersingers could be considered parallels of French troubadours and trouvères.

Among the minnesingers, Hermann, a monk from Salzburg, deserves special note. He incorporated folk styles from the Alpine regions in his compositions. He made some primitive forays into polyphony as well. Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar von Hagenau are probably the most famous minnesingers from this period.

Opera:


(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

The Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (1791) is usually said to be the beginning of German-language opera, which was further advanced by composers like Ludwig van Beethoven. An earlier starting date for German opera, however, could be Heinrich Schütz's Dafne from 1627. Schütz is said to be the first great German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach, and was a major figure in 17th century music.

In the 19th century, two figures were paramount in German opera: Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner. Wagner introduced devices like the leitmotiv, a musical theme which recurs for important characters or ideas. Wagner (and Weber) based his operas off German history and folklore, most importantly including the Ring of the Nibelung (1874). Into the 20th century, opera composers included Richard Strauss (Der Rosenkavalier) and Engelbert Humperdinck, who wrote operas meant for young audiences. Across the border in Austria, Arnold Schoenberg innovated a form of twelve-tone music that used rhythm and dissonance instead of traditional melodies and harmonies, while Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht collaborated on some of the great works of German theater, including Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany and The Three-Penny Opera.

The Nazis came to power in Germany during the 1930s, and many musicians fled the country. Following the war, German composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Werner Henze began experimenting electronic sounds in classical music.

Classical era:

By the middle of the 18th century, the cities of Vienna, Dresden, Berlin and Mannheim had become the center for orchestral music. The Esterházy princes of Vienna, for example, were the patrons of Joseph Haydn, an Austrian who invented the classic format of the string quartet, symphony and sonata. Later that century, Vienna's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart emerged, mixing German and Italian traditions into his own style.


(Ludwig van Beethoven)

Romantic era:

The following century saw two major German composers come to fame early -- Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Beethoven, a student of Haydn's in Vienna, used unusually daring harmonies and rhythm and composed numerous pieces for piano, violin, symphonies, chamber music, string quartets and an opera. Schubert created a field of artistic, romantic poetry and music called lied; his lieder cycles included Die schöne Müllerin and Der Erlkönig.

Early in the 19th century, a composer by the name of Richard Wagner was born. He was a "Musician of the Future" who disliked the strict traditionalist styles of music. He is credited with developing leitmotivs which were simple recurring themes found in his operas. His music changed the course of opera and of music in general, forever.

The later 19th century saw Vienna continue its elevated position in European classical music, as well as a burst of popularity with Viennese waltzes. These were composed by people like Johann Strauss the Younger. Other German composers from the period included Albert Lortzing, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Anton Bruckner, Max Bruch, and Gustav Mahler. These composers tended to mix classic and romantic elements.

Bavaria:


(Bavarian Volks music)

Bavarian folk music is likely the most well-known outside of Germany. Yodeling and schuhplattler dancers are among the stereotyped images of German folk life, though these are only found today in the southernmost areas, and to cater to tourists. Bavarian folk music has played a role in the Alpine New Wave, and produced several pioneering world music groups that fuse traditional Bavarian sounds with foreign styles.

It was around the turn of the 20th century, across Europe and especially in Bavaria, many people became concerned about a loss of cultural traditions. This idea was connected to the Heimatschutz movement, which sought to protect regional identities and boundaries. What is considered Bavarian folk music in modern Germany is not the same as what Bavarian folk music was in the early 1900s; like any kind of folk or popular music, styles and traditions have evolved over time, giving birth to new forms of music.

The popularity of the Volkssänger (folksinger) in Bavaria began in the 1880s, and continued in earnest until the 1920s. Shows consisting of duets, ensemble songs, humor and parodies were popular, but the format began changing significantly following World War I. Bally Prell, the "Beauty Queen of Schneizlreuth", was emblematic of this change. She was an attractive tenor who sang lieder, chanson and opera and operetta.

Thanx my friends
~U-ne-ga-wa-ya~