German Chamber Music in Baden-Baden
In 1927 the Donaueschingen Chamber Music Days were moved to Baden-Baden. The music festival was now called «Deutsche Kammermusik Baden-Baden» (German Chamber Music in Baden-Baden) and was financed by that city.
Heinrich Burkard, Georg Schünemann and Hindemith 1930 wrote about the farewell to Donaueschingen in retrospect: «The friends of the festival and cheerful days of Donaueschingen have repeatedly regretted the fact that we left this town. [...] Donaueschingen during the first years was a performance venue for works of so far unknown composers. What had been gained soon moved into the concert hall and was rapidly integrated into the general music operation. The ‹Donaueschingen Idea› was fruitful. As a result, Donaueschingen would have also remained one of the many places where new music was cultivated, as they were now represented by the associations forming in many places with the same objective. [...] Other tasks seemed more important. The limited capacity of the small town offered no possibility to carry them out. Lack of funding, difficulty providing accommodation and the danger that a serious musical conference could fall to the level of an entertaining weekend, led to the necessity of changing the location.»
The programming scope of the Chamber Music Days was expanded in Baden-Baden. At the 1927 concerts, alongside chamber works, compositions for mechanical instruments, film music and small musical theatre pieces were performed; these included Hindemith's sketch Hin und zurück.
For 1928 the music committee, consisting of Heinrich Burkard, Joseph Haas and Paul Hindemith, called for the composition of «chamber music of all genres as before (including works for harpsichord), film music, small musical stage works, organ works and chamber cantatas.»
A central theme of the Chamber Music Days in 1929 was original music for radio. The performance of the Lindbergh Flight, a joint conception of Hindemith, Bert Brecht and Kurt Weill, earned applause for the most part. On the other hand, the premiere of the Brecht-Hindemith Lehrstück caused a scandal, especially because a person was sawed into pieces during the notorious «Clown Scene».