About the University of Music Lübeck (MHL)
Profil
Today, over 500 young musicians from around 50 countries study at the MHL. Here, they receive optimal preparation for the stage, the orchestra, the church, as well as for teaching and the teaching profession. Modular, multi-faceted courses and intensive, individual support from over 180 lecturers active worldwide – including around 40 professors – characterise the courses at Schleswig-Holstein's only university of music. The MHL also offers doctoral programmes in musicology, music theory and music education. Numerous collaborations with other cultural institutions in the state enrich the range of courses on offer and link them to professional practice. These include the Lübeck Opera Studio and the Lübeck Orchestra Academy of MHL and Theater Lübeck, which offer young top-class musicians a special start to their careers.
Performance experience is just as much a part of the curriculum as developing and presenting new concert formats and music education concepts. With over 400 events per year, the MHL is one of the largest concert organisers in the country. More than 35,000 visitors experience the lecturers and students in symphony, rock, pop and church concerts, opera performances and solo recitals, as well as at academic symposia, exhibitions and lecture evenings. The MHL's ten-day Brahms Festival, founded in 1992, is outstanding. With changing themes at the beginning of May, it features around 30 concerts and over 250 performers and is unique in the German university landscape.
Our mission
University of Music Lübeck. Professional music education since 1911
The MHL is based on the simple yet ingenious idea of a perfectly harmonious orchestra: the ensemble as an overarching conceptual idea. Together rather than alone! As individual as each of us may be, we all identify with a shared passion: for music of all eras, styles and cultures.
Our goal is to offer a comprehensive, excellent music programme. Teaching and learning as a synthesis of all areas of study and training. With our creative environment, we encourage a very personal musical and human maturation process as well as the promotion of individual, diverse, but also unconventional artistic development. We value an experimental spirit and encourage an imaginative approach to academic teaching and scientific discovery. Students receive personalised support from our lecturers and excellent assistance from our modern, well-organised team in scheduling and planning. The MHL is an international meeting place for students and lecturers. Here, with the increasing globalisation of modern society, a wide variety of cultures, nationalities and worldviews come together. We are united by an inherent desire to work on our future with and for music: together, with mutual respect and great passion.
We have been cultivating our rich cultural heritage since 1911. Our music academy provides the ideal foundation for exploring new paths and visionary ideas. It is a 21st-century music institution with a keen sense of social and cultural developments and the needs of our time. The MHL is an important part of musical life in Schleswig-Holstein and far beyond. We prepare future musicians, music teachers and educators for their everyday professional lives in a practical and contemporary manner. Furthermore, we are the largest concert organiser in the state of Schleswig-Holstein: with over 400 concerts a year, ranging from opera performances to symphony, rock/pop, chamber music and church concerts to solo recitals. Lübeck is vibrant. And we – the lecturers, students and staff of the MHL – are the cultural, intellectual and sensory building blocks of cultural life. In Lübeck, in Germany, internationally.
History
History
In 1911, Lübeck's first professional music education institution was established as a private initiative. Modelled on the conservatory founded by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, piano teacher Luise Kaibel opened the Lübeck Conservatory of Music in »Schüsselbuden 2«. The institution changed its name and status several times throughout its history until the state of Schleswig-Holstein promoted its only training centre for music professions to university status in 1973. Outstanding artists, including composer Hugo Distler, were involved in the management and training at the predecessor institutions. They laid the foundation for the development of the MHL as an internationally recognised university of music.
Predecessor institutions
- Lübecker Konservatorium der Musik und Vorschule (1911-1923)
- Lübische Singschule (1923-1933)
- Lübecker Staatskonservatorium und Hochschule für Musik (1933-1937)
- Landesmusikschule Schleswig-Holstein (1938-1950)
- Schleswig-Holsteinische Musikakademie und Norddeutsche Orgelschule (1950-1969)
- Staatliche Fachhochschule für Musik (1969-1973)
- since 1973: Musikhochschule Lübeck