(from Ger. Gasse: ‘alley’ and hauen: ‘to hew or beat’, ‘to walk’).
A German street song or urban folksong. The term ‘Gassenhauer’ occurs in a musical context as early as 1517 (Aventin: ‘Gassenhawer that are played on the lute’) and in a title in 1535 (Christian Egenolff's Gassenhawerlin). Hans Sachs mentioned the Gassenhauer along with other types of song (psalms, songs of love and war etc.) in the preface to a conspectus of his poems in 1567 (Summa all meiner Gedicht vom MDXIII. Jar an bis in 1567 Jar), implying that by that date it was a recognized category. Indeed, the word had been defined by J. Maaler in Die teütsch Spraach (Zürich, 1561) as ‘a low song sung in the street, a street song’. Before the term ‘Volkslied’ became widely known (it was coined by Herder in 1773), Gassenhauer was often used in a broad sense to refer to popular or folk melodies, although 17th- and 18th-century usage normally indicates that the writer considered the term synonymous with nocturnal street serenades (cf the 16th-century Kassaten, Gassatim or Gassatum, from which are probably derived Gassatio and Cassatio: ‘cassation’; Praetorius mentioned Gassaten in Syntagma musicum, iii, 1618). Gassenhauer is now generally but not invariably used in a pejorative sense for a song popular among city-dwellers, a usage clearly attested in J.C. Adelung's late 18th-century German dictionaries, and in T. Heinsius's Volkthümliches Wörterbuch (ii, Hanover, 1819, 288), where it is defined as ‘a usually low [schlechtes] or very well-known song sung on the streets by the populace [Pöbel]’. The term is probably most familiar from Beckmesser's intended criticism of Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act 1 (‘Gassenhauer dichtet er meist’).
There were several attempts in Germany in the 20th century to describe and define the relationship between Gassenhauer, Volkslied and Schlager (‘hit’), and although no general agreement was reached, the most fruitful attempts were those that sought to integrate considerations of purpose, and sociological and historical significance, with purely philological considerations. The Schlager (a term first used in 1881) is normally ephemeral; the Gassenhauer, too, usually has a rather short life, although some examples share the longevity of the Volkslied. Sociological considerations provide the firmest basis for a distinction between the street song and the folksong. The former is by its nature urban, the latter rural; by extension, the former is artificially promulgated, the latter naive and traditional. The social connotations of the three song types permit only certain transfers of repertory: a Volkslied can become a Gassenhauer (frequently after a process of adaptation and regularization) but a Gassenhauer cannot become a Volkslied. A Gassenhauer can, however, become a Schlager, while a Volkslied cannot, except at the price of loss of integrity.
Early German operas from Hamburg show many examples of the closeness of the aria or song to the Gassenhauer, particularly in the frankly popular style of many of the melodies in comic scenes. Keiser's preface to his Almira arias (1706) complains of ‘students of theatrical composition who take pleasure in the invention of a Gassenhauer by village fiddlers, their colleagues’, a reference apparently aimed at Handel. Many songs by Postel, Keiser and others found their way into the streets via broadsheets and songsheets. The songs that Bach combined in the final quodlibet of his Goldberg Variations were Gassenhauer, and Sperontes' immensely popular collection of songs, the four-volume Singende Muse an der Pleisse (Leipzig, 1736–45), contains a whole series of popular melodies, including dances, songs and instrumental numbers.
Several songs from the Singspiele of Hiller and his contemporaries likewise took on the broad familiarity of the street song, as had songs from the Viennese popular theatre of the time of Kurz-Bernardon and Philipp Hafner. There are many later examples of songs becoming Gassenhauer from the scores of Wenzel Müller, Kauer and other minor masters of the Singspiel, continuing at least until the time of Flotow, Lortzing and Suppé. The popular style and moralizing tone of some of these examples bring them close to the Bänkelgesang (fairground singers' ballads and moral tales in music).
The Bridesmaids' Chorus from Der Freischütz, which Weber headed ‘Volkslied’ in the score because it is based on a popular dance, is an example of an operatic number that rapidly became a Gassenhauer – as readers of Heine's Briefe aus Berlin (1822) will recall. Examples of coarser urban songs from the first quarter of the 19th century that achieved great popularity are O du lieber Augustin and Ein Schüsserl und ein Reinerl in Vienna; in the previous century Malbruk s'en va t'en guerre enjoyed widespread fame. Apart from being quoted or used as the basis for sets of variations by many composers (e.g. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Hummel), these Gassenhauer were frequently provided with new and sometimes absurdly unsuitable texts. The range of the street song is extremely wide, from melodies of distinction to banal and sentimental ditties in their music, and from simple, direct storytelling via satire to bathos, prurience or obscenity in their texts. Many Gassenhauer have a catchy refrain (in this respect they are close to the couplet); the Bänkelgesang may also have such a refrain, but its text is meant to be taken seriously, for it carries a moral message of actual relevance, while in the Gassenhauer story or moral is incidental, if present at all.
In the course of the 19th century industrialization and the growth of urban communities exaggerated the distinction between Volkslied and Gassenhauer. The latter continued to derive from the more popular melodies of serious composers, especially songs from Singspiele and operettas, as well as from marches and dances. Although both text and melody were occasionally taken over into Gassenhauer, the more usual practice was to equip the chosen melody with new words, usually either sentimental or crassly inappropriate. These fresh and often witty parodies are well represented in Lukas Richter's invaluable study of the Berlin Gassenhauer. Even the 20th-century use of mechanical methods of disseminating music, such as radio, gramophone and cheap sheet music, did not prevent the continuation of local Gassenhauer traditions – the Viennese Gassenhauer tended to be quite different from those of Berlin, Munich or Cologne. Perhaps the clearest distinction between the street song and the popular hit song is that the former is local and frequently nostalgic (referring to ‘die gute alte Zeit’), while the latter prides itself on what may at times be a spurious modernity.
Although some research has been done into the street songs of particular cities, there is no full-scale study of the subject. In all the main centres, however, there are clear links between the Gassenhauer and opera or Singspiel songs, dances and marches; from the 1850s onwards the operettas of Offenbach were a particularly favourite source of street songs. The most tuneful melodies of the latest hit were equipped with racy texts that usually had no connection at all with their original situation. Although the long history of the Gassenhauer is probably of more interest to the sociologist than to the music historian, the best examples have a vitality, directness of expression and even memorability that compel attention.
See also Quodlibet and Street cries.
KretzschmarG
MGG1 (K. Gudewill)
A. Reissmann: Das deutsche Lied in seiner historischen Entwicklung (Kassel, 1861)
J. and W. Grimm: Deutsches Wörterbuch, iv/i/1 (Leipzig, 1878/R), 1449–50
F.M. Böhme, ed.: Volksthümliche Lieder der Deutschen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1895/R)
A. Kopp: ‘Der Gassenhauer auf Marlborough’, Euphorion, vi (1899), 276–89
W. Tappert: ‘Gassenhauer’, Bühne und Welt, vi (1904), 802
A. Penkert: Das Gassenlied (Leipzig, 1911)
H. Naumann: ‘Gassenhauer’, Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, ed. P. Merker and W. Stammler (Berlin, 1925–31, rev. 2/1955–88 by W. Kohlschmidt and W. Mohr)
J. von Pulikowski: Geschichte des Begriffes Volkslied im musikalischen Schrifttum (Heidelberg, 1933/R)
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E. Janda and F. Nötzoldt: Die Moritat vom Bänkelsang, oder Das Lied der Strasse (Munich, 1959)
W.V. Ruttkowski: Das literarische Chanson in Deutschland (Berne, 1966)
L. Richter: Der Berliner Gassenhauer: Darstellung, Dokumente, Sammlung (Leipzig, 1969)
G. Salvetti: ‘Musiche nelle contrade: annotazioni sul Gassenhauer in area viennese’, Danubio: una civiltà musicale, ii: Austria, ed. C. De Incontrera and B. Schneider (Trieste, c1992), 261–78
PETER BRANSCOMBE