Electroacoustic and applied music

Electroacoustic music is of particular importance: its roots at today's mdw go back to the middle of the 20th century.

The Studio for Electronic Music was founded as early as 1959 (one of the first such facilities at a European music academy), and in the same year engineer Hellmut Gottwald began to build an electronic instrument – a kind of precursor to the voltage-controlled synthesiser (this instrument, called AKAPHON in homage to the music academy, was used for many years as reference material for electronic sounds and is now in the Technical Museum in Vienna). The course for electro-acoustic (Lehrgang für Elektroakustische Musik) music established in 1963/64 was initially under the direction of Friedrich Cerha, who was succeeded by Dieter Kaufmann in 1970, when the Vienna studio had already been elevated to the status of an "institute". By establishing intensive contacts with foreign centres of electroacoustic music (in France, Central Europe and Latin America), Kaufmann provided important impulses for the expansion of the then still young musical form in Austria.

In 1983, the Austrian Society for Electroacoustic Music (GEM) was founded, with which the Institute cooperated closely, for example in organising the International Symposium for Electroacoustic Music ACUSTICA and - together with the Kunstverein Wien - the "Elektronischer Frühling" festival in the Alte Schmiede. - In the 1980s, the composers Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Erich Urbanner and Francis Burt took over the management of the former institute.

In the 1990s, the curriculum included a further course for sound engineers and a composition class for applied music, for which Klaus-Peter Sattler was the first professor from 1992. In the 1997/98 academic year, the two branches of study Electroacoustic Composition and Media Composition and Applied Music were finally established as part of the full composition programme. This established two further specialisations alongside instrumental/vocal composition and music theory. This division of the degree programme has remained in place to this day.

Recent developments and outlook

The transformation of the university into the University of Music and Performing Arts in 1998 initially had no impact on the content of the degree programmes mentioned. However, it did initiate a reorganisation process: in 2002, the university was restructured into 24 institutes. The former Department 1 for Composition, Music Theory and Conductor Training was transformed into the "Department 1 for Composition, Electroacoustics and Tonmeister Training" and "Department 2 for Music Conducting", with the former subsequently being renamed Department 01 of Composition Studies and Audio Production in spring 2024 to reflect an initial restructuring of the Tonmeister_in studies into a Bachelor's/Master's programme, which will be followed by composition in the coming years. 

In the course of the post-war period, the increasing differentiation of study programmes in the fields of composition/music theory was accompanied by an ever greater spatial fragmentation of the departments in different locations; however, the negative side effects associated with this should be a thing of the past in the near future with the new construction of the Future Art Lab – a spacious new building on the university campus on Anton-von-Webern-Platz – which has now begun. By bundling all the forces represented at Institute 1 in one location, the conditions for a lively interdisciplinary exchange will be in place in the future. This will form the basis for a contemporary teaching and learning environment in the fields of composition, theoretical reflection and music production.

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