Com­po­si­ti­on

First things first: stu­dents who choo­se com­po­si­ti­on as a sub­ject at the HfMDK are choo­sing art – they are choo­sing to ex­plo­re and crea­te mu­sic free­ly, re­gard­less of whe­ther they are hea­ding towards a Ba­che­lor's or Mas­ter's de­gree.

Stu­dents are en­cou­ra­ged to ex­plo­re the gro­wing field of elec­troacoustic mu­sic and elec­tro­nic me­dia in par­al­lel with in­stru­men­tal mu­sic, and to ex­plo­re the ar­tis­tic use of tech­no­lo­gy in ge­ne­ral. Me­tho­do­lo­gi­cal­ly, we sup­port them in this – we work ac­cord­ing to the mo­del of stu­dent-cen­te­red lear­ning, while at the same time of­fe­ring in­ter­di­sci­pli­na­ry ex­chan­ge. In this way, we achie­ve that stu­dents suc­ces­si­ve­ly de­ve­lop their own fo­cal points and la­ter have a lot of con­fi­dence in the im­ple­men­ta­ti­on of their ide­as.

Short paths, long pro­ject list

The­re is ple­nty of space and op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­pe­ri­men­ta­ti­on, for examp­le with the Stu­dio for Elec­tro­nic Mu­sic and Acoustics (sel­ma) and the Frank­furt LAB. We also re­gu­lar­ly or­ga­ni­ze class con­certs, par­ti­ci­pa­te in the short­cuts se­ries or­ga­ni­zed by the In­sti­tu­te for Con­tem­pora­ry Mu­sic IzM, and main­tain con­tact with the pro­ject fun­ding fund Kunst­PAKT. Ex­tern­al­ly, we coope­ra­te with the Schirn Kunst­hal­le Frank­furt and the off-thea­ter sce­ne, with the Mainz Uni­ver­si­ty of Ap­p­lied Sci­en­ces (for the Lu­mi­na­le) and the Max Planck In­sti­tu­te for Em­pi­ri­cal Ae­s­the­tics, among others.

The HfMDK Foun­da­ti­on sup­ports the uni­ver­si­ty with the en­do­wed guest pro­fes­sor­ship in com­po­si­ti­on. Re­spon­si­ble for the IzM, it brings in­ter­na­tio­nal­ly re­now­ned com­po­sers to Frank­furt for a year to work with stu­dents of all di­sci­pli­nes. The first of the­se were Bri­an Fer­ney­hough from Gre­at Bri­tain (2019) and Lu­cia Ron­chet­ti from Ita­ly (2020).