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Gassenhauer
(756 words)

The word Gassenhauer is attested as a proper name around 1413 and was common in the 16th century as a pejorative term for “worthless vagrants” [2]. Its earliest use in a musical sense was in 1517 in the Latin grammar of J.A. Turmair. In the first centuries of the early modern period, Gassenhauer was a neutral term for a simple secular song popular among the urban population. In 1535, for example, a collection of secular multi-part songs with the title Gassenhawerlin und Reutterliedlin was published in Frankfurt am Main; essentially it was addressed to the bourgeoisie of the p…

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Wenzel, Silke, “Gassenhauer”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_SIM_019618>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20180208



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