Music

As a nation where culture has always been important Germany possesses a strikingly rich and topographically dense musical landscape.

That is the outcome of an outstanding historical legacy, primarily shaped by the works of such great German composers as Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner, and more recently Hindemith, Stockhausen and Rihm

However richness and abundance also derive from aristocratic or early bourgeois political energies which created a musical infrastructure in many regional and local centres. Across the centuries and down to the present day that guarantees a uniquely multi-layered musical culture, unparalleled elsewhere in Europe. Unlike centralized France or Spain, Italy, or Poland, musical energies and their locations are widely disseminated in Germany - which makes it difficult to gain an overview and describe this situation.

The number of regional music centres and institutions increased still further in Germany from 1990 as a result of the reunification of West and East - especially as the East German state, interested in gaining international prestige, promoted cultural activities and music (and sport too) even more consistently than the former Federal Republic. However public capacity to finance all of this is now confronted by crisis.

In the 16 German federal Laender the organizational structure of today's music-making is dependent on both public support from federal, regional, and local authorities, and on sponsors, private patrons, and personal initiatives. Measured internationally, this musical culture is probably the most successful, most diversified, most expensive, and economically most profitable. Its most important components are:

• around eighty opera houses differing in size, mainly presenting opera, drama, and ballet
• dozens of symphony orchestras, chamber and specialized ensembles, and choirs
• training with state music colleges, conservatoires, and city music schools
• around a dozen public service broadcasting companies with television and radio programmes offering much music
• millions of amateur musicians in clubs and churches
• a large number of music competitions and music festivals of all shapes and sizes
• a diversified network of public and private assistance for music
• a large market for music media, musical instruments, and means of transmission of music

Musical centres are distributed across the country, mostly in regional cities - headed by Berlin as the German capital with its three big opera houses financed with tax-payers' money and eight symphony orchestras. Then come Munich with two opera houses and four symphony orchestras, Hamburg, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Dresden, and Leipzig.The charm of German musical life also owes very much to smaller and widely scattered centres of culture such as Freiburg, Ulm, Halle, Münster, Bonn, Bamberg, Darmstadt, and Potsdam. Tradition and a usually cautiously clever delight in innovation, well-organized infrastructure and active public participation, and musical activities in innumerable little local centres endow Germany as a whole with the reputation of being a mecca for music, attracting musicians and listeners from all over the world.

The greatest impact is exerted by three institutions vitally symbolizing the character of German musical culture today:

• the Berlin Philharmonic with 120 years of history shaped by great conductors (Nikisch, Furtwängler, Karajan, Celibidache, Abbado, Rattle)
• the Richard Wagner Festivals at Bayreuth since 1876
• and the Donaueschingen Days of Contemporary Music since 1922.

They above all - alongside the Darmstadt Vacation Courses for New Music established in 1946 - demonstrate that Germany has been (particularly after world war two) and remains the leading country for what is musically contemporary.