Music Trail

The Notenspur (Music Trail) project, which emerged from Leipzig’s citizenry and has been in development for many years, breaks new ground in the culture of remembrance, cultural mediation and citizen participation. It builds bridges between high culture and socio-culture and continues the tradition of civic music promotion in the civic city of Leipzig. It forms a bracket and umbrella brand for Leipzig’s extraordinary musical heritage.

For centuries, the civic city of Leipzig has attracted world-class composers as a city of commerce, science and publishing. Telemann and Bach, Lortzing, Mendelssohn and Schumann, Wagner and Grieg, Mahler and Janáček lived and worked here. Others such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Bruckner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Strauss gave guest performances here, promoted young talent or had their works published. Many of the homes and places of work of these composers have been preserved to this day, resulting in a globally unique local density of original sites of musical world heritage.

The core of the Notenspur idea is to consciously connect this great musical heritage with the city and to understand it as part of the urban identity and development.

The Leipziger Notenspur is thus in a position not only to preserve a globally important cultural asset, but also to keep it alive in the present and to develop it further.

In the meantime, the Leipziger Notenspur project has achieved international renown and is a showcase project that bundles and presents the advantages of Saxony as a cultural state and Germany as a country of music. We want to share the positive experiences with the Leipziger Notenspur project with other people in Europe, linking up with common cultural roots and composers whose lives connect us with each other: Janáček, Mahler, Grieg, Čiurlionis, Schulhoff and many others.

In 2018, the network of nine Leipzig music heritage sites and the Leipziger Notenspur was awarded the European Heritage Label.