Between August 2018 and December 2020, the European Music Trails followed the paths of Clara Schumann, Edvard Grieg and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis to Germany, Norway and Lithuania, where in the late 19th and early 20th century they initiated exemplary changes in each of their respective fields of music. Each of their paths led at one point to Leipzig, Germany, where all of them lived or studied for some time and which Clara Schumann called her home.

The professional musicians of that era thought of themselves as Europeans, who maintained a lively exchange of ideas, spoke several languages, and travelled long distances from one concert venue to another. Clara Schumann gave hundreds of concerts all over Europe. She travelled to Paris and Copenhagen, Moscow and Prague, London and Amsterdam, to name only a few. While they travelled, they met other composers and became friends with musicians from different parts of the continent. On his journeys, Edvard Grieg met Peter Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and many more. Studying in different cities in search of the best teachers was quite common, getting in touch with the regional culture, as Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis did in Warsaw and Leipzig.

Between 2018 and 2020 three partners cooperated in this project: M. K. Čiurlionis House from Lithuania, MB Classics from Norway and Notenspur Leipzig e.V. from Germany (see Past Projects > Project Partners). The European Music Trails set out to encourage an exchange of artists, ideas and music between the three countries by organizing concerts, artist residencies, and workshops, as well as educational materials and activities for children and young people. The main objectives of the project were audience development and transnational mobility. In order to develop younger and more diverse audiences we trained multipliers, instigated the active participation of citizens, utilized highly frequented public places, and moved live music from conventional concert venues to unusual places.