Learning more about the academic foundations of music both historically and in the present while simultaneously digging deeper into the artistic and practical side of musical culture? Obtaining insights into professional practice as well as experience in research-based learning? The 2025/26 winter semester will see the mdw launch a new academic and artistic master’s degree programme. From that point forward, each academic year will see ten students given the opportunity to begin studying musicological foundations and current historical musicology research discourses from theoretical as well as academic and practical standpoints at the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies.
The special features of this academic and artistic master’s degree programme consist first and foremost in the department’s five thematic emphases, which are unique in Austria in this form: cultural studies, philosophy of music, music theory and analysis, contemporary music history, and interpretation research, of which one may be chosen for study in greater depth. A second special feature is this programme’s “Academic and Artistic Workshop”, which will be team-taught each semester by academic and artistic faculty members. Here, students will be able to gather academic and practical experience and make contacts for their professional futures. “The Academic and Artistic Workshop forms the core of this programme,” explains studies commission chair Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild. “It’s about applying academic skills in order to understand, actively shape, and reflect upon processes of artistic production.” Such reflective processes as well as academic and artistic doings can play out in various inter- and transdisciplinary contexts. This is to be facilitated by the targeted initiation of cooperative relationships with entities such as archives and libraries, opera houses and concert halls, museums, festivals, music publishers, and artists’ agencies as well as the field of music journalism. The Academic and Artistic Workshop will enable students to engage in pursuits such as developing concepts for exhibition formats or programme booklets, academic and artistic cooperation as part of stage works’ study and rehearsal, music criticism and/or the authorship of editorial texts for published editions, or music tourism-related projects.
“Our master’s degree programme is designed such that students with prior experience in both academic and artistic areas can apply,” says Melanie Unseld, head of the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies. “Right at the entrance exam, applicants are called upon to demonstrate their ability and eagerness to link academic pursuits with artistic experience.” The objective of this master’s degree programme is to guide the students toward various professional fields in a very concrete way. And, not insignificantly, it should also enable students to embark upon academic careers in university-level research and teaching.
The IMI’s research and teaching cover a broad array of topics, making it possible to offer students a commensurately broad opportunity to learn. Moreover, the research projects situated at the IMI provide students with insights into current research fields and discourses, with the various thrusts of the department’s research being characterised by a future-oriented, innovative, international, and interdisciplinary orientation that takes up current societal and artistic themes, participates in shaping their development, and hence also undergoes constant development itself. “Teaching and research at our department are very closely linked,” emphasises Unseld, ”so research-led teaching is more than an empty phrase.” What’s more, the programme’s free electives provide further impulses to go into greater depth: students can select courses offered at and outside of the mdw, even including offerings by universities situated abroad. Herzfeld-Schild remarks: “In this master’s degree programme, students really do have an opportunity to get to know musicology in its full breadth and delve deeper into their areas of special interest while at the same time gathering experience in concrete professional fields, which will leave them optimally prepared to finish their master’s degrees and enter professional practice—ideally also with a clear idea of where their paths will lead following graduation.” One such path can, of course, consist in earning a doctorate and pursuing academic research projects.
A prerequisite for admission to the academic and artistic Master of Arts in Musicology is completion of substantively relevant prior studies (to at least the bachelor’s degree level) at an accredited postsecondary educational institution in musicology or other humanities and cultural studies fields such as philosophy, history, and theatre studies or of a music and/or music education degree with an academic component such as the mdw’s ME/IME, IGP, Music Theory, Composition, Church Music, and Conducting programmes.
The IMI looks forward to welcoming its first MA students in October and joining with them to celebrate the launch of this new programme! Registration for the entrance examination is planned to open on 15 March 2025. Further information on the academic and artistic Master of Arts in Musicology and on registering for the entrance examination can be found at: mdw.ac.at/imi/masterstudium
