Forms of German-language
music include Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), Krautrock, Hamburger Schule, Volksmusik, German hip hop, trance, 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 trouvère.
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.
Classical music: sixteenth century to the present
Germans have played a leading role in the development of classical music. Many of the best classical musicians such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Brahms or Mahler were ethnically German. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, German classical music was revolutionized by Oswald von Wolkenstein, who travelled across Europe learning about classical traditions, spending time in countries like France and Italy. He brought back some techniques and styles to his homeland, and within a hundred years, Germany had begun producing composers renowned across the continent. Among the first of these composers was the organist Conrad Paumann.
Folk music
Germany has many unique regions with their own folk traditions of music and dance. Much of the 20th century saw German culture appropriated for the ruling powers (who fought "foreign" music at the same time), and thus it remained decidedly unpopular until later in the century. Most recently, the East German regime promoted folk music as long as it was what they saw as an expression of pure German tradition, and a tool for spreading party propaganda.
In both East and West Germany, folk songs called volkslieder were taught to children; these were popular, sunny and optimistic, and had little relation to authentic German folk traditions. Inspired by American and English roots revivals, Germany underwent many of the same changes following the 1968 student revolution in West Germany, and new songs, featuring political activism and realistic joy, sadness and passion, were written and performed on the burgeoning folk scene. In East Germany, the same process did not begin until the mid-70s, when folk musicians began incorporating revolutionary ideas in coded songs.
Popular folk songs included emigration songs from the 19th century, work songs and songs of apprentices, as well as democracy-oriented folk songs collected in the 1950s by Wolfgang Steinitz. Beginning in 1970, the Festival des politischen Liedes, an East German festival focusing on political songs, was held annually and organized (until 1980) by the FDJ (East German youth association). Musicians from up to thirty countries would participate, and, for many East Germans, it was the only exposure possible to foreign music. Among foreign musicians at the festival, some were quite renowned, including Inti Illimani (Chile), Billy Bragg (England), Dick Gaughan (Scotland), Mercedes Sosa (Argentina) and Pete Seeger (United States), while German performers included, from both East and West, Oktoberclub, Wacholder and Hannes Wader.
Accept
Germany is historically called Das Land der Dichter und Denker (the land of poets and thinkers). German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular. As a result, it is difficult to identify a specific German tradition separated from the larger framework of European high culture. Another consequence of these circumstances is the fact that some historical figures, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Kafka and Paul Celan, though not citizens of Germany in the modern sense, must be considered in the context of the German cultural sphere in order to understand their historical situation, work and social relations.