(Ger.: ‘teaching piece’).
A 20th-century neologism closely associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht, who probably invented the term; he used it to describe a theatrical genre for amateur performance whose principal function was to teach the participants (through performance and discussion) rather than to engage the attention of an audience. Written at a time when the Nazis were gaining power in Germany, Brecht’s Lehrstücke attempt in particular to teach political attitudes, often explicitly Marxist.
Brecht wrote his texts when he was experimenting with novel yet highly simplified forms of presentation derived from agit-prop drama, Gebrauchsmusik and his own theories of ‘epic theatre’. Music plays an important part in all of them, and a dominant one in the Lehrstücke composed by Weill, Hindemith and Eisler. Their settings stretched the boundaries of music theatre by integrating a variety of techniques from conventional opera and theatre with elements from oratorio, revue, dance and film. The composers also underlined the didactic purpose of a Lehrstück, treating it as a means by which amateurs could be taught specific musical accomplishments and a new interpretative dimension added to the dialectic.
Brecht’s attitude to his seven Lehrstücke was pragmatic, and he frequently revised them. The first three were revised extensively, with the result that their definitive texts do not correspond with those set to music.
Der Lindberghflug, for example, was first published in 1929 as a play for radio. It was set jointly by Hindemith and Weill and presented at the Baden-Baden Festival in the same year, in a manner indicating that some parts of it were ideally to be supplied by the radio loudspeaker and some by the listener at home. Later in 1929 Weill alone composed a second setting, the published Der Lindberghflug, as a cantata for the concert hall that revealed little of its origins in radio. In 1930 Brecht published an expanded version of his text under the title Flug der Lindberghs, describing it as a ‘Radio Lehrstück for boys and girls’ (in 1950 he altered the title to Der Ozeanflug, added a prologue and suppressed the name of Lindbergh, who had been a Nazi sympathizer; the title of Weill’s cantata was also changed). This work contained no explicitly didactic content until Brecht made his 1930 version, and although suitable for amateurs Weill’s cantata is thus not a true Lehrstück.
A work actually called Lehrstück, with music by Hindemith, was written for the same Baden-Baden Festival of 1929, and the vocal score was published in that year. Brecht later published a revised and expanded version of the text as Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis. Der Jasager, with music by Weill, was written and first performed in 1930. After criticism from the children who performed it, Brecht wrote a second version and a complementary Lehrstück, Der Neinsager. Weill set neither of these texts. Brecht’s most important Lehrstück, Die Massnahme, was first performed with music by Eisler in 1930. Paul Dessau composed the music for Die Ausnahme und die Regel (1930), and Kurt Schwaen for Die Horatier und die Kuriatier (1934).
MGG2 (K.-D. Krabiel)
S. Günther: ‘Lehrstück und Schuloper’, Melos, x (1931), 410–13
M. Esslin: Brecht: a Choice of Evils (London, 1959)
J. Willett: The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (London, 1959, 3/1967)
H. Braun: Untersuchungen zur Typologie der zeitgenössischen Schul- und Jugendoper (Regensburg, 1963)
B. Brecht: ‘Zu den Lehrstücken’, Gesammelte Werke, ed. E. Hauptmann, xvii (Frankfurt, 1967), 1022–35
R. Steinweg: Das Lehrstück (Stuttgart, 1972, 2/1976)
K.-D. Krabiel: ‘Das Lehrstück von Brecht und Hindemith: von der Geburt eines Genres aus dem Geist der Gebrauchsmusik’, Hindemith-Jb, xxiv (1995), 146–79
IAN KEMP