Paul Hindemith’s Cantata “Frau Musica” in the Context of the Participatory Musical Art Development

The article analyses the cantata “Frau Musica” by the German composer P. Hindemith. This work has come to be widely understood as an example of Gebrauchsmusik in the works of O. Leontieva, K.-D. Krabiel, M. Breivik. Gebrauchsmusik is often identified as utility music, which means that it is created for some specific purpose; but the purpose does not have to be utilitarian. In order to assess the profoundness of the composer’s concept and to clarify specifics of the descriptive term, it is necessary to go back to the basics of the theoretical debates about the social role of art that unfolded in the 1920s. Their main participants were H. Besseler and T. Adorno. A valuable source of information is the programs of music festivals in Donaueschingen and Baden-Baden, where Gebrauchsmusik was evolving as a multi-genre artistic experiment. Hindemith played the leading role in this process. It is also important to understand the reasons that prompted the composer to use M. Luther’s text in the cantata “Frau Musica”.

Today the Gebrauchsmusik’s ideas — revitalization of the audience, expanding access to musical education and practical musical activities that evolve collaborative work — have gained the most relevance. According to the author’s hypothesis, “Frau Musica” can be regarded as an illustrative example of a work that combines different views on the nature of musical participation: a spiritual act, a collective work, the highest level of musical accessibility. In this particular composition, Hindemith intuitively found the most promising ways for the development of creative interaction between the composer and the listener, which subsequently led to the creation of a whole corpus of participatory works, including Tod Makover’s “City Symphonies”, Alexander Radvilovich’s “Baltic Music”, Paul Rissman’s “Supersonic”.

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