An Innovative Approach to Musical Training and Social Responsibility
It is music’s power to overcome barriers and leave people deeply touched that the association Musethica has to thank for its consistent development since the very beginning. Founded in Zaragoza, Spain by violist Avri Levitan and economics professor Carmen Marcuello in 2012, Musethica offers outstanding young musicians a special complimentary training module: through an intensively pursued practice of performing live at institutions that provide social services, participants not only further the development of their artistic abilities but also make a valuable contribution to society.
Learning by Performing: The Concept behind Musethica
At the core of Musethica’s approach is the facilitation of concentrated, high-impact learning by providing students with additional experience performing live in the most varied situations. The focus of their practicing and rehearsing is thus expanded beyond appearances at student concerts and in traditional concert halls to also include performing in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and various settings of therapeutic and social work. Such performances serve to further develop the participating students’ musical expressivity and presence while also reaching people who would otherwise enjoy little or no access to concerts.
A Musethica session can feature up to 12 concerts and also includes intensive rehearsing as well as feedback rounds between the individual performances. The session’s mentors make music together with the students and accompany them throughout the entire artistic process—and after each concert, the mentors provide targeted feedback that addresses technical and interpretational aspects while also serving to further develop students’ musical presence and expressive power. This frequent exchange gives rise to a sustained surge in artistic development that continues far beyond any individual concert: working closely with experienced tutors enables participants to refine their interpretational powers from performance to performance, develop a deep understanding of their music’s emotional effects, and realise their artistry at the highest level.
Musethica at the mdw: Training with Social Commitment
Musethica has been cooperating closely with the mdw since 2017 and is now well established here thanks to its integration into curricula as an elective course. In this, an important aspect for the mdw is its collaboration with the municipal healthcare provider Vienna Healthcare Group (WiGeV). Numerous Musethica concerts at WiGeV facilities have already taken place thanks to this relationship. And in addition to these, the mdw has also been reaching people directly in their hospital beds with annual streamed Christmas concerts for WiGeV’s patients, residents, and employees since 2020.
The EU Project 1000+ Concerts: IHMESI
The mdw is a partner institution in the EU-funded project “1000+ Concerts: Innovating Higher Music Education through Social Inclusion (IHMESI)”. The objective of this four-year effort, in which ten European institutions and organisations are collaborating to implement the Musethica programme, is to sustainably establish expanded training for young musicians in which practice-oriented concepts and social inclusion are addressed. Participating students have the opportunity to engage actively in socially inclusive work, playing a total of over 1,000 free live concerts for those segments of the population who enjoy the least access to excellent performances of classical music.
At the mdw, this project is being led by Johannes Meissl (as academic director), Avri Levitan (as artistic director), and Bernhard Karl (as project coordinator). Together, they’re working to help further expand Musethica and also facilitate its inclusion in the curricula of other European higher music education institutions in order to sustainably anchor music-making as a social practice in the training that they offer.
On the mdw’s collaboration with Musethica and the associated new project 1000+ Concerts, Vice Rector Johannes Meissl states:
“To me, developing the Musethica project is among the most important strategic focuses tied to the further cultivation of our understanding of excellence in the sense that achieving top-level artistic quality is inseparable from students’ socially relevant orientation and enablement. My own participation in numerous Musethica sessions as a performer and mentor has resulted in some of the most important and wonderful experiences of my entire career!”
Musical Excellence and Social Responsibility
Musethica and the mdw are demonstrating impressively how artistic excellence and social engagement can be combined. Students benefit from training that relates closely to actual practice, affording them valuable experiences in varied social contexts. At the same time, people at institutions that provide social services are afforded access to concerts of high artistic quality that would often not otherwise be part of their everyday lives.
This approach sets a strong example for forward-looking musical training that impacts society beyond the concert hall. Its marriage of superlative musical achievement and social responsibility enriches not just students, but society as a whole—as an inspiring model for the university-level musical training of tomorrow.
