(English: 'useful music')
Music term coined by
Paul Hindemith in the 1920s. Roughly it means 'Music which
serves the purpose', especially in a social or educational way. As a reaction to
difficult
Romantic music, the proponents of Gebrauchsmusik, led by Hindemith and
Weill (both
influenced by the Bauhaus movement and the poet
Bertolt Brecht), started composing music that could
be played by anyone and should appeal to widest possible audience.
Gebrauchsmusik ranged from songs, marches, radioplays, '
Lehrstucke' to complete
theatre works (most notably,
The Threepenny Opera).
Especially new technologies like
radio,
cinema and
grammophone were important
factors in the popularity of Gebrauchsmusik.
After the war most of its ideas where picked up by composers in former
East Germany and mainly used in
utilitarian music.