Musical standards are falling in Germany
Germany continues to be a place of longing for many musical talents from all over the world. However, the first Beethoven Colloquium as part of the Beethoven Campus Bonn has come to the conclusion that this leading position is under threat.
At the colloquium, a working group led by Martella Gutierrez-Denhoff, Head of Music Education at the Beethovenhaus, reported that there is a glaring shortage of specialists in early music education and in the primary school sector, i.e. in education for the first ten years of life. There is also a lack of trained music teachers for the further training of interested educators and primary school teachers. Neither educators nor primary school teachers have a basic musical education as part of their training.
A second working group, led by Matthias Pannes, Managing Director of the Association of German Music Schools, diagnosed a main problem for secondary schools in the trend towards all-day schools. There, individual musical learning is made "enormously more difficult". Musical talent and willingness to learn must be focused on much more, especially in the age group up to 20, in order to be able to keep up with international competition. Qualified private music schools should be much more involved in this than they have been to date.
A third working group, led by the Rector of the Cologne University of Music and Dance, Heinz Geuen, emphasized that the emphasis on teaching and pedagogy must be significantly increased in the professional training of music universities. The high international appeal of German music academies is leading to a continuous increase in the proportion of foreign students, who often have a great advantage over young German talent.
