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A total of 30 % of the pupils in the two highest grades take music as a subject. The majority of them study in courses with a basic level.

Instrumental and orchestral music, music teaching and musicology are the most popular subjects. In total, the degree programmes for music professions have more than 33,000 enrolments.

Rock and pop music is the most popular genre in Germany, especially in the age groups up to 59 years. Older people show a strong musical taste for oldies and evergreens.

In 2021, there were more than 15,000 choirs and instrumental groups in the Catholic Church. Of its 326,000 members, most sing in an adult church choir.

Mozart's ‘The Magic Flute’ was the most performed opera of the 2020-21 season. Under the pandemic conditions, works that are performed less frequently appear in the ranking.

‘Die Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauss and ‘The White Horse Inn’ by Ralph Benatzky were Germany's most performed operettas of the 2020-21 season.

National productions continue to make up a large part of the German longplay charts – most recently it was 58 % of the Top 100. International productions are becoming more popular again.

In 2019 and 2020, national productions dominated the German singles charts. In 2021, international productions became more popular again.

Almost 236,000 pop and classical recordings were available on the German music market in 2021, 70 % of which were audio albums in the pop segment. About 13,900 titles were new releases.

Pop music achieved the largest share of music industry's turnover in 2021, though significantly less than in the noughties. The hip-hop and rock genres were also strong in terms of turnover.

The COVID-19 pandemic broke out during the 2019-20 season. With approximately 7,200 concerts and 3.9 million visits, the orchestras' event figures were correspondingly lower.

The pandemic impact is visible in event and attendance figures of the 2019-20 season. In total, there were 7,900 opera, operetta, musical and dance performances with 4.8 million visits.

In the 2019-20 season, the theatres had more than 16,000 permanent artistic employees in singing, dance, choir and orchestra, as well as in artistic management and non-performing areas.

The total expenses of publicly financed theatres in Germany amounted to more than 3.4 billion euros in 2019. Almost three quarters of the expenditure was for staff.

Public music schools had more than 1.4 million pupils in the calendar year 2020. Particularly in the pre-school and primary school age groups, pupil numbers declined in the first pandemic year.

Public music schools offer a variety of instrumental and vocal subjects. Piano, guitar, violin, recorder, percussion and flute have the highest numbers of pupils.

With almost 6,200 schools and 5,100 kindergartens, most of the cooperation partners of public music schools are educational institutions. Many music clubs are also partners.

Against the background of the war in Ukraine, Michael Custodis reflects on the political content and politicisation of music.