Functional music

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Functional music (also functional music ) is a collective term for music that fulfills certain tasks in social contexts. Its opposite is usually called autonomous music . The term function is also used within musical contexts: For example, in function theory, one speaks of the function of chords . Functional music, on the other hand, fulfills extra -musical functions.

term

The term is associated with the emergence of the sociology of music in the 1930s and tried the genre of popular music that still undisputed in the eyes of the life of the art music to bring distinguished, in a systematic relationship. In contrast to the older term " everyday music" , which was a catchphrase from the 1920s and was used by Paul Nettl, for example, "functional" music focuses on the sociological differentiation of its use. The ideological instrumentalization of music in the dictatorships of the 1930s and its commercial use in the mass media were issues of the time. In this context, Albrecht Riethmüller affirmed: "Music in the National Socialist celebration is 'functional music' in the strict sense."

In 1934 the American company Muzak was founded, which sparked a lively discussion about commercial music. Theodor W. Adorno emphasized the character of functional music as a “commodity” and considered the lack of awareness when listening to be a central feature of the functional. In 1937, for example, he declared that jazz "as an accompaniment to dance or as a background for conversation" did not claim to be a "synthetic unity of apperception " and therefore had a "constitutively unconscious" function.

Since the 1950s, Heinrich Besseler preferred the term “social music” for everyday music in social situations, which he distinguished from “performance music”. Ideological functions were excluded from this approach.

Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht advocated the term functional music, but only wanted it to be used in contrast to so-called autonomous music , which makes it more or less synonymous with trivial music . Eggebrecht called the music that is heard in certain social contexts, such as dance music , table music , work music , advertising music , as functional music. In the year he was written in 1973, he explicitly included modern genres such as " Pop , Beat , Psychedelic Music ".

In his 1993 overview, Albrecht von Massow differentiates between functional music in the narrower sense as a term for " background music such as work or department store music " and in the broader sense as a classification for "any type of composition linked to specific social purposes such as dance and marching music". In contrast to Eggebrecht, Massow explains: “Function as a fundamental category brings all music into the focus of a sociological consideration without exception”.

The Functional Music Handbook (2017) describes forms and areas of application of music in connection with motor vehicles , telephones (including music in telephone loops), films and video games . One chapter is devoted to music therapy .

prehistory

Today one has to explain what the “autonomous” counterpoint to functional music is all about: Until the 18th century, European music was also exclusively functional, that is, social events in church, theater, dance floor, aristocratic or bourgeois Subordinate to “Chamber”. In contexts in which people did not talk, pray, eat or dance during the music, a less "serving", self-confident music developed that was also more carefully designed - mainly the music presented as background music to the aristocratic card game (so-called chamber music ). From the music of Joseph Haydn , for example, one can infer quite precisely what level of attention he expected from his listeners. In the early days of the bourgeois concert, this tendency towards greater attention led to music from around 1800 on which the full concentration of silent and immobile listeners is ideally directed.

But this music could also have social functions, for example as a pretext for gathering or as a demonstration of acquired education. The expression “functional music” as used by Adorno or Eggebrecht tries, like “entertaining music”, to present an ideal that may never have existed in the desired autonomy, in order to separate the rest of the music from it. Carl Dahlhaus therefore called the term “phantom”.

literature

  • Helmut Rösing: Functional music. Questions about the definition and mode of operation . In: Musicologica Austriaca. Annual journal of the Austrian Society for Musicology , 3, 1985, pp. 85–99.
  • Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht: Terminology of Music in the 20th Century . Steiner, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 978-3-515-06727-0
  • Günther Rötter (Ed.) Handbook of Functional Music. Psychology - technology - areas of application. Springer, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-14362-6 (print); ISBN 978-3-658-14362-6 (online)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albrecht Riethmüller: Composition in the German Empire around 1936 . In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft , 38, 1981, pp. 241–278.
  2. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: About jazz. Oxford Supplements [1937]. In: Collected Writings . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, volume 17, p. 104.
  3. ^ Heinrich Besseler: Colloquial music and performance music in the 16th century . In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft , 16, 1959, pp. 21–43.
  4. ^ Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht: Functional music . In: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft , 30, 1973, pp. 1–25.
  5. Albrecht von Massow : Functional Music in: Concise Dictionary of Musical Terminology , 22nd delivery 1993, also in: Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht: Terminology of Music in the 20th Century , Steiner, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 157-163.
  6. Massow in: Eggebrecht: Terminology of Music in the 20th Century , p. 162.
  7. Online version of the Functional Music manual. Retrieved March 3, 2017.
  8. ^ Carl Dahlhaus: About the "middle music" of the 19th century . In: Helga de la Motte-Haber (ed.): The trivial in literature, music and visual arts . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1972, pp. 131–147.