“Please don’t kid yourself that things used to be better, that’s all utopian talk!”

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1970

Presenter and network, center for documentation and information, operational center and initiator for new music since 1946 – the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD) is all of these things. With its International Summer Courses for New Music, its Archive, and its Library the IMD continues to make and document cultural history as a constant interplay of invention, performance, listening, reflection, and retention.

The Summer Courses are a meeting place for music makers and listeners. Creativity takes wing, ideas are passed along, and artistic positions are debated; they provide opportunities for interaction between cultures, and between the younger generation and internationally recognized composers, interpreters, and scholars. The extensive and extremely valuable holdings of the archive and library illustrate the ideas and creations of artists and scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries, made available for research in the form of scores, writings, correspondence, photos, press articles, and recorded media.
And of course the IMD is more than just an initiator: it is continually analyzing current trends and inventing itself anew. For example, as of 2009 a new and loosely-conceived series of projects – in collaboration with the Kulturfonds FrankfurtRheinMain – is planned for the Frankfurt am Main metropolitan region.