In this issue of mdw Magazine, we take a close look at the broad and weighty topic of exile both through a (contemporary) historical lens and in its current dimension amidst ongoing geopolitical conflict and horrific wars. The portraits in our various recurring sections highlight exile’s lasting impacts on artists’ personal biographies, and we also introduce a new research project that provides an opportunity for musicians who migrated to Austria to themselves become researchers. A further feature digs into the work of the Exilarte Center, which preserves and studies materials left by artists to posterity in order to afford a wide audience access to the lives and works of those whose output was proscribed and who were displaced and murdered during the National Socialist era. And our focus on exile is rounded out by an introduction to a project of the mdw Archive and the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies (IMI) that investigates the history of our own institution during the Austro-Fascist, National Socialist, and immediate post-war periods.
The present issue also introduces IN.TUNE, the first European University Alliance in the area of music and the performing arts at large. With funding from the European Commission, this project of the mdw and seven European partner universities will be launched in January 2024. The latest editions of isa – the International Summer Academy of the mdw and of isaScience are likewise paid attention, and a detailed feature relates the colourful history of ipop – the mdw’s Department of Popular Music, which is currently celebrating two decades of existence. The mdw young research award, on the other hand, is brand new: we present the very first winners in the inaugural year of this award, which recognises secondary school students who took on topics having to do with music or other performing arts in the pre-academic research theses or diploma theses that they authored as part of their school leaving exams.
I wish you a great read with mdw Magazine and a relaxing conclusion to the present calendar year!
