Hochschule für Musik Detmold

The Hochschule für Musik Detmold is located in one of the most attractive residencies in Germany. For more than 60 years, international top musicians have been teaching here in an ambience that makes a pedagogic, artistic work of very high standard possible.

Following the tradition of the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie - as the Hochschule used to be called - the 180 artists and pedagogues, as well as numerous cooperation partners who work here, lay the foundation whereby the Detmold students are often to be found as prize winners of extraordinary competitions and are not only represented on all the significant stages and podia in the world, but also in globally prominent positions as teachers at schools and at universities.

The Hochschule possesses numerous buildings specifically equipped for training which are laid out like a campus in and around the imposing Palais garden. String players, brass players, singers and percussionists have their own "designed-for-them" houses. The pianists and organ players reside in the old Palais, where the larger chamber music ensembles also practice; the musicologists work in an art deco villa, and the school musicians and instrumental teachers hold their scientific seminars in the Pädagogikhaus (pedagogy house) which is technically excellently equipped. Opera scholars can make use of the historical Detmolder Sommertheater (Summer Theatre) for their stage training. The Tonmeister studios are built alongside the concert house.

The Hochschule contributes valuable input for the training of the Gifted in Germany with its Detmold Summer Academy and the Detmolder Hochbegabtenzentrum (Detmold Centre of the Gifted). In collaboration with the federal competition "Jugend musiziert" (Youth plays music) the Detmold lecturers and guest artists hold open master classes and train an "exception orchestra" from the prize winners of the competition at the Detmold Summer Academy. In its first year, Kurt Masur held the leadership of this orchestra.

With the project "SMS - singing makes sense", the Hochschule, together with its regional partners (amongst others the university of Paderborn, regional music schools, study seminars as well as the local administration of Detmold), tackles the fundamental deficits of society's musical development and interest. School beginners' ability to sing is improved dramatically and this on more than one level- in the schools, as well as in the training of teachers.

The "Erich-Thienhaus-Institute" of the Hochschule is a highly specialised training facility for directing the recording of music of any kind. Similar institutes were built worldwide following this example. Tonmeisters trained in Detmold, hold leading positions in the music industry globally.

The musicology seminar is held in collaboration with the university of Paderborn, a renowned institute which is at the disposal of the students. The artistic and pedagogy students benefit through its scientific work. The especially fruitful collaboration of both universities manifests amongst other in the supply of the musicology students of the university Paderborn with artistic individual training by the Hochschule für Musik Detmold.