Each year, in addition to a free choice of work, six subjects are dealt with. The subjects change every year and are equally distributed across the two semesters.

One of the subjects is a joint project by the organ and harpsichord students and the organ and harpsichord teachers. This joint project seeks the similarities and differences between the instruments. The idea is to introduce organ students to the harpsichord and vice versa. After all, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries virtually all keyboard players played both organ and harpsichord (sometimes clavichord and, later, pianoforte).

In addition to this project there are five other projects. One of the students introduces each project and each project is concluded with a concert. During a project, all students are studying the same type of music, which results in a deepening of understanding and insight.

These projects are always carried out in the second semester and include one or more lectures and an excursion to a museum or an instrument collector, for example. Subjects that have been studied in projects so far include composers, such as Händel, C.P.E. Bach, Frescobaldi and Couperin, and pieces such as Bach’s Wohltemperierte Klavier and Kunst der Fuge, music for two harpsichords and late French music.

International networks have enabled many collaborations, initially with the Tempus project, which led to numerous exchanges, primarily with Prague. Over the past few years we have been cooperating within the Erasmus network, which has resulted in exchanges of both students and teachers. Exchanges have been carried out with Antwerp, Berlin, Lisbon, Helsinki, Porto, Rennes and even Mexico City, Moscow and Tokyo. Most of the teachers then came to Utrecht to give master classes.