A Tribute to Prof. Dr. Werner Müller-Bech: Remembering the Former Rector of the Saarland University of Music.

“With Prof. Dr. Werner Müller-Bech, the Saarland loses a committed and deserving former rector of the Saar University of Music, who was closely connected to the university even during his retirement. We will keep him in honorable memory,” said Minister of Education and Culture Christine Streichert-Clivot on the news of the Saarland university teacher’s death.

“Werner Müller-Bech was a formative personality with authority, charisma and dignity for the university. I met him for the first time at the Jugend musiziert competition and during teaching experiments at the university, which he helped shape as a professor for music education. He accompanied my own development time with the completion of my studies and the first steps in university teaching with benevolence, trust, support and some good and critical advice. I am very grateful to him for that,” says HfM Saar Rector Prof. Jörg Nonnweiler.

Prof. Dr. Müller-Bech began his tenure as rector of the music academy in 1983 and held it until 1991. During his tenure, numerous full-time teachers had to be filled after the age-related retirement of several full-time teachers, many of whom had been with the academy in the founding phase. Prof. Dr. Müller-Bech to win important personalities for teaching, who shaped the HfM Saar in the following years and who contributed to its growing success.

Prof. Dr. As rector of the music academy, Müller-Bech intensified the cooperation with Saarland University by concluding a cooperation agreement with the musicological institute in 1988 for cooperation in teaching. Under his direction, the university also expanded spatially. In 1987 the Castle Church in Alt-Saarbrücken was transferred to the Saar University of Music for use and in 1988 the extension to the main building on Bismarckstrasse was inaugurated with six larger studios.

The “Saarbrücker Talks” are considered his legacy. In 1986 Prof. Dr. Werner Müller-Bech, for the first time, invited colleagues who teach piano methodology and piano didactics at German educational institutions to an exchange. His initiative became an institution: Even today, the professional and collegial exchange on questions of piano didactics and methodology as well as on training content takes place twice a year at a high level, mostly at the University of Music in Saarbrücken.

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