Bauhaus Band | Photos by T. Lux Feininger, 1927-31

T. Lux Feininger, Bauhaus Band performing, 1928-29

T. Lux Feininger, Bauhaus Band: Xanti Schawinsky on Trumpet with Three Musicians on Piano, Banjo and Drums, 1927 / T. Lux Feininger, The Bauhaus band with Oskar Schlemmer (from top: Werner Jackson, Xanti Schawinsky, Hermann Clemens Röseler), 1928

T. Lux Feininger, Bauhaus Band, 1928 Lux Feininger, Das ist Lux!!!, 1931

Lux Feininger, Charleston on the Bauhaus Roof. Xanti Schawinsky with Clemens Röseleron on banjo, 1927

The Bauhaus orchestra was founded by Andreas (Andor) Weininger during the Bauhaus’s Weimar period. The strongly Expressionistic phase of the State Bauhaus also emerged in the style of the orchestra’s music, intended as a “spontaneous product.” Inspired by the folk melodies of eastern European peoples, the Bauhaus orchestra played the “Russian” and the “Hungarian”, the “Unika” and the “Matuto” (the names of which suggest a derivation from the Mediterranean region), or the “Bo-la-bo” (influenced by Dadaism). The best-known Bauhaus melodies were the “Bauhaus Whistle”, the start of which “… could be sung to the words ‘Itten-Muche-Mazdaznan'”. After the move to Dessau, the band finally turned more and more towards American jazz. Starting in 1928–29, Lux Feininger himself also played clarinet in the orchestra, fulfilling a long-held ambition. […]