Music & Performing Arts
Germany’s reputation as a musical nation is still based on names like Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel and Richard Strauss. Students from around the world flock to its music academies, music lovers attend world-class festivals like the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth and the Donaueschingen Festival of Contemporary Music.
But other names also define Germany's musical legacy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Karlheinz Stockhausen pioneered in the field of electronic music. Kraftwerk's robotic rhythms transformed pop music and provided some of the building blocks for hip-hop. And newer German artists from Rammstein to Tokio Hotel continue to captivate young audiences around the world with their Teutonic takes on modern rock and unique visual flair.
With some 180 public and 190 private theaters, Germany is also known for having some of the most experimental theatrical and dance productions worldwide. Even small towns boast opera houses, ballet troupes and theaters, all of which contribute to the well-established network of state, municipal, traveling and private theaters.
German rap outfit Deichkind, began its career rapping in a Low German dialect to bewildered crowds of unhappy hip-hop fans. The band has ditched the dialect but retained a refreshing commitment to two principles: relentless experimentation and uncompromising silliness.
Jazz and Pop Tips
A hundred years ago, artists of all disciplines were moving into the Festspielhaus Hellerau, the cultural center of Germany’s first garden city. After years of renovation and artistic groundwork, the legendary building is now set to become the most important cultural center in eastern Germany.
Hellerau – European Center for the Arts
What if you had to choose a pop song to represent the USA and win the hearts and minds of people everywhere in an Olympics of song judged by the common folk? This is the challenge that European countries face every year in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Eurovision
Jazz has been popular in Germany for nearly as long as it has existed. A new generation of German jazz musicians are now pushing the boundaries of the genre, sometimes past recognition. According to saxophonist Lutz Streun of the band Three Fall, that is just how it ought to be.
Three Fall Interview
Immediately after November 9, 1989, reunification took place in empty cellars where teenagers from the West and the East confronted one another in a flush of strobe lights and electronic rhythms. Twenty years later Berlin has become the world capital of club culture.
Techno in Berlin
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