Music, power and the state are in a symbiotic relationship to one another. On the one hand, music is seen as an aesthetic experience or a stimulus for individual emotions; on the other hand, it is also a form of public staging of state power and thus part of a political rite. Music has always accompanied, reflected and immortalized cultural, social and political processes of consolidation and change. But what makes music so powerful that neither rulers, rulers nor opposition groups want to do without it? In order to approach the complex phenomenon of music from different perspectives, this volume brings together studies by historians and musicologists from the early modern period to the present. The spectrum ranges from state music and art music to folk songs, hits and schnulzen up to rock and pop songs.