It all began a few years ago with a clarinet concerto by the American composer Aaron Copland (1900–1990). My eye was caught by the words at the very top of the page: “For Benny Goodman”. Was Copland friends with the swing icon? Did they work together? Or did the composer simply admire Goodman (1909–1986) as a musician?

Since 2023, the mdw has been honouring outstanding papers of these types that pertain to music and the performing arts at large with the “mdw young research award (myra)”. Alongside providing some public recognition for these frequently ambitious papers, the point is to strengthen the connections between our university and schools as well as to lend visibility to disciplines and questions concerning music and other performing arts that interest young people and are also focuses of work at the mdw.

The fact that Helmut Lachenmann now occupies an outstanding position in the contemporary music scene is owed not just to his compositions but also to the efficacy of his writings, which have stimulated the production of a considerable number of texts referring thereto.

How do art and sound enter into dialogue with each other in the public realm? As part of KlangBildKlang, the three-day spring school “Sonic Dialogues: Intersections of Art and Sound in Public Spaces” offered a forum for early-stage researchers to explore precisely this question.

The new artistic research project “Spirits in Complexity” is a cooperative effort together with the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) in Linz, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the University of the Arts in Reykjavik, and several artistic and scientific experts.

The international gathering Critiques of Power in the Arts (25–27 April 2024), initiated by the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies and co-curated in collaboration with a network of critical friends from the realms of research and practice, stood out for unusual academic formats such as performances, workshops, and jam sessions that were held in various mdw spaces.

On the evening of 24 May, the main campus of the mdw was given over to the 2024 Long Night of Research, offering an interested audience of all ages insights into the research taking place at our institution.

What do musique mixte, gender roles in Austrian film, and music mediation have in common? The answer is that all three are topics of mdw dissertations recognised with the 2024 Herta & Kurt Blaukopf Award.

What’s the present-day significance of music-related commemorative work? And just how might one familiarise people with “ostracised music” in the absence of contemporary witnesses? On these topics, Priska Seidl spoke with Volker Ahmels and Gerold Gruber at the Festival Verfemte Musik [Festival of Ostracised Music] in Schwerin.