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Welcome to mittelalternativ.de

This website mainly contains the annual "Mittelalternativ Challenges". Other content, such as new melodies, or articles on composition are added infrequently and irregularly.

There is no global "change language" button. You have to select the language on each individual page.
Some parts of this website have not been translated yet, and maybe never will. I apologize for the inconvenience.

What is Mittelalternative Music?

The name of this website "mittelalternativ" is a German play on words, combining "Mittelalter" (medieval) and "alternativ" (alternative). Most people just call it "Medieval Music", even if that is not technically correct.
What they mean is a style of music that has been developed in partly worldwide, but uniquely in Germany since the 1980s, initially as utility music for so-called "Medieval Markets", comparable to "Renaissance Fairs".

Today this music is also an independent genre with its own recordings and concerts. Listeners are very "generous" in what they accept as belonging to the music genre: Besides newly composed pieces, you can find whole melodies, or single elements, from folk songs of all centuries, fantasy, LARP and boyscout songs, folklore from Europe (i.e. Irish or Scandinavian Folk), or actual medieval music (900-1430), dance music of the Renaissance and more. Some Heavy Metal bands also integrated these elements into their music (e.g. Band + Bagpipes) and are considered "medieval" as well.