Studying Piano in Munich: HMTM’s Two Bachelor’s Routes

HMTM offers two piano bachelor’s routes in Munich: an artistic degree and an artistic-pedagogical degree. Both lead to a Bachelor of Music over eight semesters and 240 ECTS. The choice changes the curriculum, the entrance examination and the German you need: the current course pages specify B1 for the artistic route and B2 for the artistic-pedagogical route.

The useful starting point is the work you want to do during those four years. Would you like your studies to concentrate on developing a performing identity, or would you also like sustained preparation for teaching an instrument? Both routes involve serious piano playing. Teaching adds another demanding question: how do you help someone else hear, understand and make music?

Before choosing, look at three things:

• Your musical interests: solo repertoire, chamber music, song accompaniment and teaching.
• The full entrance requirements: the video, the live programme and the additional tasks for your route.
• Your German preparation: the required certificate and the conversations you will take part in.

This guide focuses on first-year piano bachelor’s applicants to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München. The official course pages and examination documents are linked at the end.

Two degree routes

On HMTM’s website, look for Klavier followed by the full study direction. Künstlerische Studienrichtung is the artistic route. Künstlerisch-pädagogische Studienrichtung combines artistic and pedagogical study. The degree title alone will not tell you which curriculum you are reading.

The artistic-pedagogical route includes a teaching qualification in piano. It can also be taken with a Nebenfach, an additional subject leading to a further teaching qualification. HMTM lists variants involving another instrument, singing or elementary music pedagogy. Choosing one of these brings its own entrance requirements and course commitments; the compulsory instrumental work is a different category.

If your ambition is school classroom teaching, look separately at HMTM’s Lehramt programmes. The piano bachelor’s comparison here concerns artistic and instrumental-pedagogical study. Start with the kind of teaching you want to undertake, then identify the appropriate qualification.

I would be wary of choosing the pedagogical route simply because its solo audition list looks shorter. Enjoying the process of teaching matters. You will spend time observing another person’s learning, explaining musical ideas, trying different approaches and reflecting on what happened. That work can be deeply satisfying when it belongs to your musical interests.

Inside the curriculum

The artistic study plan gives a prominent place to principal-study piano and also includes professional development, chamber music, song accompaniment and piano in context. Theory, aural training, music history and an introduction to instrumental pedagogy sit alongside the performance work. An artistic degree therefore contains more than a succession of solo lessons.

Imagine preparing a Beethoven sonata. In the principal-study lesson, you might work on the relationship between the opening gesture and the arrival of the second subject. Analysis can help you hear what the harmony is doing during that journey. Playing with a singer, meanwhile, asks you to attend to a phrase whose breath and words come from someone else. These activities can change the way you hear your solo repertoire.

The artistic-pedagogical plan retains substantial principal-study work and ensemble playing. It adds subject-specific teaching methods, supervised teaching practice, communication strategies, music-school placements and projects, and work with adults and other learner groups. The module handbook describes artistic development and pedagogical competence as connected aims.

One small piano problem shows why both deserve attention. A learner repeatedly loses the left hand when the right hand becomes busier. As a pianist, you can demonstrate the passage. As a teacher, you also need to discover what the learner is noticing: the bass notes, the fingering, the rhythm, or only the more conspicuous melody. The next exercise depends on that observation.

You might ask the learner to play just the bass at the moments where the harmony changes, then add the right-hand melody without its decoration. If the pulse holds, the texture can grow again. Explaining the exercise, listening to its result and deciding what to change are musical skills in their own right. This is the kind of relationship between playing and teaching I find worth exploring before a degree application.

The currently linked study plans distinguish entry cohorts: the newest artistic plan is labelled for winter 2025/26, while the pedagogical documents cover entry from winter 2024/25. Read the plan assigned to your own entry year when HMTM publishes or updates it, including the version with your intended minor subject.

Video and live repertoire

Both piano routes begin with a video selection. The artistic bachelor’s video is listed as 15 minutes; the pedagogical video is approximately 15 minutes. Each asks for a main movement from a Classical sonata, an étude and a work of your choice. The artistic route specifically requires a Chopin étude in that video.

HMTM permits cuts between separate works but prohibits technical editing within a performed work. The video repertoire can differ from the live programme. These details matter when planning a recording: select complete performances that meet the requested categories, then check the current instructions for the total submission.

The live requirements are broader. The table below compares the principal-study repertoire for entry to the first semester; the official documents also address other entry points.

The approximately 15-minute live examination is the hearing, not the length of the programme you prepare. For the artistic route, HMTM explicitly says that the commission chooses what it hears and that an unprepared or partly prepared required work results in failure. Learn the complete required repertoire, including the movements of a sonata, rather than selecting a fifteen-minute recital from the list.

A strong programme needs different kinds of musical readiness. In the Baroque work, listen to how a voice continues when another voice enters. In Beethoven, attend to the weight and timing of harmonic changes as well as the brilliance of the passagework. A Romantic work may ask for a sustained melodic line across changing accompaniment, while later repertoire can demand a very different sense of attack, colour or silence.

Those differences should be audible in a first hearing. I would listen to a candidate’s programme for character as well as security: does the pulse have the same weight in every piece, or has the player found a convincing way of moving within each style? A list spanning several periods becomes musically persuasive when the contrasts emerge from the playing.

For the free-choice video work, choose something that adds to the sonata movement and étude. A piece with a long, quiet line may reveal listening that the other selections leave less room to hear. The choice still has to fit HMTM’s instructions and your actual preparation. Our guide to recording a piano audition video covers the separate question of capturing that playing clearly.

The teaching-route group task

For first- and third-semester entry, the artistic-pedagogical examination includes a music-pedagogical group task. Four to six applicants develop a musical result from one of two starting materials, with approximately 15 minutes for the practical work. A five-minute individual written reflection follows. The material can lead towards an arrangement or an improvisation.

This changes the preparation. Practising alone develops your own decisions; a group also reveals how you listen to an idea that somebody else introduces. You may need to adjust a texture, invite a quieter participant into the music, or make a short suggestion that everyone can try immediately.

For a preparation exercise, take a short melody with a clear four-beat pulse. Let one person play the melody, another offer a simple repeating bass, and another add a small rhythmic response. First hear whether the melody remains distinct. If the accompaniment fills every gap, try leaving alternate beats empty and listen again.

The point is to make a musical choice together. “Let’s leave space after the phrase” gives the group something to hear. “It needs to be more musical” gives them much less to work with. After a change, play the passage through before discussing the next idea; the sound may answer a question that would otherwise occupy several minutes of conversation.

Then write a few sentences about the process. Describe the initial texture, the change you tried and the difference you heard. If the bass pattern obscured the melody, explain whether fewer notes or a softer attack solved the problem. This is more revealing than a general statement that the group worked well together.

The example is a way of practising collaborative musicianship. For the examination itself, work with the task HMTM provides and attend to the people in the room. A memorised speech about your teaching philosophy cannot replace listening to the music being made.

Theory and aural preparation

Both routes include general music theory and aural requirements for first-year entry. HMTM’s documents list a 60-minute written theory examination, roughly 60 minutes of written aural work and a short practical aural examination. The official sample papers are useful starting points because they show how the university presents tasks.

The theory sample includes notation, intervals, scales, triads and inversions, and musical terminology. Read the German instructions while you solve the musical question. Recognising a chord at the keyboard and understanding a request to name its inversion are related abilities, but they need practice together.

Try playing C–E–G, then E–G–C. The pitch classes remain the same, while the bass and spacing change the sound. Sing the bass before naming the inversion, then write it. Moving between listening, playing, singing and notation helps you discover whether an answer comes from hearing or from recognising a familiar drawing on the page.

The practical aural tasks include repeating and completing a musical opening, at the voice or instrument, and easy sight-singing. A useful preparation exercise is to hear a short opening, reproduce it, and then offer a continuation that preserves its pulse and responds to its shape. Listen to the ending: has it settled, remained open, or changed direction?

This work can run alongside repertoire preparation in small, regular sessions. Use a few minutes to sing a bass line from your current piece or identify the harmony at a cadence, then return to the whole texture. Keep some unfamiliar material in the practice too, so that the task tests your listening rather than your memory of the piece.

German and communication

The current requirement is B1 for the artistic piano bachelor’s and B2 for the artistic-pedagogical piano bachelor’s. HMTM says the required certificate must be available on the day of enrolment. Its accepted-proof list includes specified Goethe, telc and ÖSD certificates at the relevant levels, along with other named qualifications.

Choose a test from that list before booking it. A certificate from a general private language course is not automatically an accepted substitute. The broader guide to German requirements for piano study explains how to separate the level, the accepted proof and the deadline.

For the artistic route, work towards understanding feedback and answering it at the piano. A teacher might ask for a more clearly directed phrase, then ask where you hear its destination. Prepare to point to the score, play the passage and explain one choice. You are taking part in a musical discussion, not simply recognising vocabulary.

For the teaching route, add language for collaboration and reflection. Wir könnten die Begleitung vereinfachen means “We could simplify the accompaniment.” Die Melodie war danach deutlicher zu hören means “The melody was easier to hear afterwards.” The first proposes a change; the second reports what it did to the sound.

Practise those functions with music you actually play. Explain a problem, suggest a small change, listen, then describe the result. You will sometimes need more vocabulary, and sometimes you will need a more precise musical observation. I teach German alongside piano with that practical relationship in mind.

Applications and the Munich visit

The two course pages list 5 March as the application deadline, and HMTM’s central application page specifies 23:59 for the standard deadline. The currently announced live examination period is 12–22 June 2027. Applications and the required video go through the university’s online portal; check the portal’s intake and current document requirements when preparing your submission.

The live examination takes place in Munich. HMTM says it cannot be replaced, even partly, by a virtual examination. Applicants admitted to additional examinations may need to remain for several days. Plan travel around the university’s actual invitation and timetable, rather than treating the piano hearing as a single isolated appointment.

Make room in your preparation for playing on an unfamiliar instrument. In a practice room, spend the first few minutes discovering how quietly a repeated note speaks, how the bass carries, and how much pedal the room can take. Then play a short opening from the programme. The aim is to listen and adapt while retaining your idea of the piece.

The course pages currently list a semester contribution rather than tuition for these bachelor’s routes. Keep that separate from accommodation, travel, everyday living and any application charges shown by the university. A study plan needs room for both the audition journey and the years that follow it.

Choosing your route

A useful conversation about HMTM can begin with one piece and one teaching experience. Play something that represents the direction you want to develop. Then describe a moment when you helped another person with music: what did you notice, what did you try, and what changed? Your response to that second activity may tell you a great deal about the pedagogical route’s appeal.

If your interests include both performing and teaching, compare where each activity appears in the curriculum and how much of your study you want to devote to it. The artistic route includes introductory pedagogical study; the artistic-pedagogical route makes teaching practice and its reflection a sustained part of the degree. Read the actual subjects alongside your longer-term plans.

At Vienna Piano School, I help pianists prepare repertoire, strengthen the musical skills around it and develop the German needed for lessons and study. Support can also include application preparation and communication with professors. My teaching background and approach provide the context for that work. Online lessons are available now, with Tokyo and Shinjuku in-person lessons planned from October 2026, for teenagers from junior-high-school age and adults.

For a free 30-minute trial lesson, bring your proposed HMTM route and a piece you are preparing. We can listen to what is already convincing, identify the musical work that needs time, and consider how German preparation fits alongside it.