Radio music
Radio music (also: radio music ) are compositions that are created for the purpose of transmission through the mass medium of radio . Especially in the early days of broadcasting up to the early 1930s, they should be adapted to the new technical possibilities of broadcasting. Radio music is usually commissioned works that the broadcasting companies give to composers. The instrumental light music in this context is also called sophisticated light music.
history
requirements
The radio medium is part of a series of numerous developments in the field of sound carrier media . As early as 1877, Thomas Alva Edison succeeded in capturing the human voice for the first time, he developed the first technical sound carrier, the phonograph, from which the gramophone emerged. In doing so, he laid the foundation for a technical sound carrier development that continues to this day.
The telephone , which was quite popular at the time as a medium for transmitting music and which also developed large ranges (the first concert was broadcast live from Philadelphia to New York via telephone in 1877), still required the intermediate medium of wire. Transmission of voices and music without wire was still unthinkable. Although the American John Harworth registered a patent for wireless telegraphy as early as 1862, it was the German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1887 who at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences let electromagnetic waves jump over wirelessly using a spark inductor - which literally "jumped" the spark. In doing so, he laid the foundation for the wireless transmission of voices and music, and ultimately also for the medium of radio. Among others, it was the Italian Guglielmo Marconi , whose decisive developments made music possible at the push of a button on the radio.
The early years up to 1933
In Germany there were regular radio broadcasts from the Berlin Vox house from 1923 . Austria followed in 1924 with the founding of a broadcasting company, Radio Verkehrs AG (RAVAG). Initially, this new development had hardly foreseeable consequences for music. Numerous new fields of work and tasks were opened up, for musicians as well as for composers.
But which music should you broadcast on the radio? Should it be old music, serious music, light music, contemporary music? A heated discussion broke out, a discourse that can still be read today in contemporary radio magazines. Own radio music was created.
Composers from all musical directions were addressed. The boundaries within this contemporary music were fluid, as the names show, including Walter Braunfels , Max Butting , Pavel Haas , Paul Hindemith , Hermann Reutter , Franz Schreker , Ernst Toch and Kurt Weill , who were important innovators of their time Music history have gone down. But composers like Mischa Spoliansky , Eduard Künneke (whose music was once played in the symphony concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic ) or Edmund Nick , who mainly wrote light music , also belonged to this group.
In many cases, the prohibitions and persecution of Jewish and politically inconsistent authors in the Third Reich are responsible for forgetting this music . This music originated when German popular music was experiencing its last heyday - before the Nazis also falsified it and ushered in its end. The radio music is an intersection between popular music and various currents of contemporary music of the Weimar Republic. They show little-known facets of a music created for the loudspeaker audience, which took its strength from the innovations of its own time. These musical experiments, which were written for live transmission through just a single microphone, know no musical boundaries, dance and jazz stand alongside classical symphonic forms and avant-garde innovations of the time. Almost every musical genre was tried out, from chamber music to large symphonic compositions. The development of own, media-specific genres, which consciously use the technical possibilities of the radio, occurred above all in "radio plays with music" and in the radio opera (also called "radio opera").
The sources for the radio music must be described as extremely diffuse, the majority of the works were not printed.
Early contemporary discussion
Radio, and with it the radio play , have been the subject of educational, philosophical and aesthetic discussions in the feature sections and magazines of the time since the beginning. The question of their own music in line with the medium of radio was also part of this. The new form that was being sought for the still young medium of radio, dealing with texts and music in front of a large but invisible and not directly reacting audience, was a new experience. The technical prerequisites for live performance and transmission through just a single microphone and the limited sound transmission at the other end, the radio loudspeaker, required new acoustic concepts from both the lyricist and the composer.
“At first the situation was like this: radio, as a new instrument for transmitting music, took over the common practices of maintaining music. Operas were broadcast, light music was obtained from the café, from the dance hall, from the beer garden, concerts were organized by the individual broadcasting companies according to the tried and tested public model. You knew that there was new music. So from time to time they started playing new music. Slowly the clairaudient broadcasters recognized the contestability of this very convenient method from the broadcasting point of view. In any case, broadcasting creates a new sociological situation. He cannot count on the music-loving, traditional listener in the opera houses and concert halls. In front of the loudspeaker, very few have the artistic receptiveness that they definitely try to convince in a concert. So you had to set up the programs differently, you had to take into account the various demands, you also had to consider which type of music would have the appropriate effect on the radio and which would not. The problem of original radio music emerged. Perhaps one overestimates it here because of genuine German thoroughness. But one thing is certain: only clearly contoured, clearly orchestrated, only pure music prevails in the microphone. ”(From Heinrich Strobel : On the musical program policy of broadcasting. In: Melos. Zeitschrift für Musik. 1930, p. 178f.)
Editing and recording project
Since 2005, the orchestra of the Dresden State Operetta has been recording so-called radio music (or radio music) under the direction of its chief conductor Ernst Theis in close cooperation with MDR Figaro and since 2008 with Deutschlandradio Kultur . The archive of the Akademie der Künste Berlin supports the project.
The “Edition RadioMusiken” project sees itself as a documentary series and supplements the view of the music history of the Weimar Republic by taking a new look at the popular music and culture of that time. In many cases, they are real sound carrier premieres. So far the following works have been recorded:
- Max Butting : Sinfonietta with Banjo, Op. 37. 1. Radio music for orchestra (1929)
- Max Butting : Cheerful Music op.38. 2. Radio music for orchestra (1929)
- Walter Gronostay : Murder. A radio play (1929)
- Wilhelm Grosz : Bench and Ballads for medium voice and chamber orchestra, op.31 (1931)
- Pavel Haas : Radio Overture op.11 (1930/31) (German and Czech version)
- Paul Hindemith : Sabinchen. Musical radio play. Text by Paul Seitz (1930)
- Eduard Künneke : Dance suite for jazz band and symphony orchestra. Concerto Grosso in five movements (1929)
- Edmund Nick : Living During This Time. Lyric suite in three movements. Text by Erich Kästner (1929)
- Franz Schreker : Small Suite for Chamber Orchestra (1928)
- Mischa Spoliansky : Charleston Caprice for large orchestra (1930)
- Ernst Toch : Colorful Suite op.48 (1928)
- Kurt Weill : The Berlin Requiem. Small cantata based on texts by Bertolt Brecht (original version 1928)
MDR Figaro , Deutschlandradio Kultur and WDR 3 have already dedicated several programs to the recordings. With the publication of Edmund Nicks and Erich Kästner's “ Life in This Time ”, the first episode of the “Edition RadioMusiken” appeared on the classical label CPO in July 2010.
literature
- Klaus Blum: The radio opera. Phenomenology and History of a New Art Form. Cologne 1951, (Cologne, University, dissertation, from December 17, 1951, typed).
- Siegfried Goslich: Music on the radio. Schneider, Tutzing 1971, ISBN 3-7952-0105-5 .
- Irmela Schneider (ed.): Radio culture in the Weimar Republic. A documentation (= German Text Library. Vol. 2). G. Narr, Tübingen 1984, ISBN 3-87808-382-3 .
- Christiane Timper: Radio Play Music in German Radio History . Original compositions in the German radio play 1923–1986 (= Hochschul-Skripten. Medien. Me. 30). Spiess, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-89166-101-0 (also: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 1988).
- Elke Niebauer: Radio publications . Radio publications and specialist periodicals 1923–1992. An inventory (= materials on radio history. 4). Published by the German Broadcasting Archive, ARD Historical Archive, Frankfurt am Main. German Broadcasting Archive , Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-926072-37-7 .
- Joachim-Felix Leonhard (ed.): Program history of radio in the Weimar Republic (= dtv. 4702). 2 volumes. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-04702-X (in particular the chapter: Susanne Großmann-Venrey: Broadcasting and Established Musical Life. Volume 2, pp. 725-846).
- Nils Grosch: The music of the New Objectivity. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 1999, ISBN 3-476-01666-8 (also: Freiburg (Breisgau), University, dissertation, 1997; therein: pp. 181-257: Rundfunkmusik 1929. ).
- Michael Stapper: light music on the radio of the Weimar Republic (= Würzburg music-historical contributions. Vol. 24). Schneidern, Tutzing 2001, ISBN 3-7952-1060-7 (also: Würzburg, University, dissertation, 1999/2000).
