History of the University

Constitution

When Felix Mendelssohn founded the Conservatorium of Music in Leipzig in 1843 – the first of its kind in Germany – he must have realised it had to be part of a flourishing musical environment in order to survive. Given its historical development, Leipzig was eminently suitable for the Conservatorium since it boasted a host of factors ('locational advantages', to use modern business jargon) from which the renamed Academy of Music and Drama continues to benefit. They include the Gewandhaus, St Thomas's Boys Choir, Leipzig Opera House and the Schauspiel theatre company, which by embodying artistic perfection represent a yardstick for the Academy's students. They are also a source of teaching staff and help in many other ways. Moreover, the Academy is embedded within an entire artistic and academic ensemble thanks to its proximity to one of the oldest universities in Germany and nowadays numerous other colleges. And this provides additional stimulus for combining artistic practice, teaching and academic reflection.
Throughout Germany and the rest of the world, the Leipzig Academy of Music and Theatre is regarded as an important torch-bearer of historical tradition. One of the features of a college teaching music and drama is that its 'material' almost completely comprises works of art which are open to interpretation. The question of their validity and vitality, and the dialogue between the past, tradition, the present and innovation make up the day-to-day mission from which a college of this type substantiates and justifies its very existence.

Between Tradition and Future

The Academy naturally has educational goals to which it has been committed since Mendelssohn's day. They have been augmented by additional fields such as the training of actors (following the integration of the former drama college in 1992), by new subjects like early music, dramaturgy, popular music and music for schools, and by the re-established Church Music Institute. The fact that training composers is nowadays no longer conceivable without the considerable involvement of electroacoustic composition and performance equipment is also apparent at the Academy, as is the need to train young artists to become music teachers. It is this broad network which makes up the very nature of the Academy – an institution of higher education which recently was granted the right for the first time to supervise and award doctoral degrees. This is also an invitation to prospective students all over the world to come to Leipzig, to see the Academy for themselves – and to study here.