Why go
Classical music is only part of the picture. Bach's Baroque work, Beethoven's shift toward Romanticism and Wagner's operas provide different listening starting points. Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream open a separate path into electronic music, while punk, rock and Neue Deutsche Welle show how popular music developed in the twentieth century.
The full story
Dieterich Buxtehude's organ music helped shape the world in which Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel worked. Beethoven later stood at the turn from Classical to Romantic music, followed by figures such as Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Wagner's operas and Richard Strauss's later compositions offer another way into that tradition. Those names can guide a visitor choosing a concert program, but they do not cover the whole story. In the twentieth century, Germany developed distinct popular strands, including Neue Deutsche Welle, East German rock known as Ostrock, punk and heavy metal. Electronic music became especially influential through Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, followed by techno and house artists. A visit centered on music can therefore be built around a classical performance, an opera or a contemporary scene. The most useful question is which sound you want to hear, since each leads to a different part of German cultural history.