The mdw’s worldwide renown is owed especially to its longstanding tradition and expertise in the training of highly talented classical music performers. But beginning in the winter semester of 2026/27, our institution will be expanding its broad range of degree programmes by a first-ever two-year Master of Arts in Popular Music Performance.
Purely electronic instruments have become a fixture in popular music, which is why I think it’s enormously important that these can now be studied at the mdw as a main artistic subject at the MA level. This puts us far ahead in terms of Europe-wide developments!
Ralf von Appen, professor of popular music theory and history & head of the Department of Popular Music
Amidst rapid technological advancements and worldwide networking, it’s particularly popular music that is experiencing constant change. Musicians working within a genre that’s enormously diverse to begin with are faced with ongoing innovation and overall transformation in terms of how pop music is being created, performed, consumed, and commercially exploited.
With its newly established Master of Arts in Popular Music Performance, the Department of Popular Music (ipop) will now be admitting ten students each academic year to begin an up-to-date programme of artistic training conceived to help them proceed competently, innovatively, and professionally in this challenging occupational field. Paramount here are finding and broadening one’s own artistic language, creating one’s own music, perfecting one’s individual instrumental and/or vocal skills, ensemble playing, artistic work as a group, and the realisation of overall performance concepts.
The new Master of Arts in Popular Music Performance affords students an opportunity to develop clear profiles: they’ll now be able to build upon our existing broadly focused bachelor’s degree programme with further qualification as educators or in-depth exploration of artistic practice. This boosts the mdw’s attractiveness to international students as well as Vienna’s role as a place of contemporary musical practice beyond its longstanding traditions of classical training.
Ulrike Sych, Rector, mdw
Ever since its establishment 20 years ago, ipop has been home to an enormous range of styles spanning all traditional and modern approaches to popular music complete with its innumerable subgenres and peripheral areas. Openness toward interdisciplinary as well as intercultural influences and the courage to shift and disrupt genre boundaries characterise everyday practice at our department.
Master’s degree students will be ensured guidance that is adapted to their individual needs by teachers from the most varied musical backgrounds. Individual lessons will focus on the necessary artistic and technical skills on their respective instruments and/or as singers as well as on performance-related individual artistic expressivity. At the same time, the ten students of each annual intake will participate in numerous artistic courses as an overall ensemble. This “Ensemble” format will see compositions in various styles by students and others worked on and performed, while “Lab” courses will feature practical instruction in a wide range of advanced content from areas including improvisation, ear training, rhythmic training, and bodywork that students will implement instrumentally and vocally.
In the “Plenum” format, scheduled regularly each semester, students will present their ongoing artistic work and reflect upon it as a group. These presentations will also serve as the communicative hub of the programme, whose overall conception invites exchange between teachers and students across the various courses and provides creative nourishment for the production of new, innovative music: from their second semester onward, students will commence work on artistic projects of their own that will subsequently embody the core content of their artistic master’s submissions and committee-evaluated master’s degree exams.
Furthermore, every semester will feature studio practica where students can learn and delve deeper into all of the important skills needed to harness the computer-based music production tools now omnipresent in popular music for their own artistic work and its representation in digital media.
Performance is its very own artistic dimension of music. It shapes how music is experienced and felt—and how it gets remembered. In our accelerated present, musicians are particularly challenged not to lose sight of the NOW. This is why up-to-date training that reflects music’s essence in the collective is so valuable.
Melinda Naomi Franzke, student & studies commission member
Not least in view of electronic music’s immense influence on contemporary popular music and electronic musical instruments’ increasing accessibility and versatility, this programme establishes the new main artistic subject of Electronics alongside ipop’s previously existing main artistic subjects of Bass, Voice, Guitar, Trombone, Saxophone, Drums/Percussion, Keyboard Instruments, and Trumpet. It is aimed at musicians specialised in electronic instruments who aspire to perform together with players of other instruments not only in the studio but also in live situations and improvisational contexts.
The curricular area “Research” revolves around contextualising, reflecting upon, and critically scrutinising artistic work. Another curricular area featuring a programme-specific selection of electives from the mdw’s course offerings opens up additional options for specialisation. Further compulsory coursework pertaining to musicology as well as composing and songwriting, a project week led by a visiting artist, and a free elective area round out this programme.
What has me most excited about this new programme is the community to which it will give rise: singers and instrumentalists will learn, create, and make music together. It’s in just such a collaborative environment that artistic voices develop fastest, giving rise to authentic musicality.
Chanda Rule, professor of voice (popular music)
ipop is looking forward to welcoming highly talented new students to the mdw when this degree programme launches in September! Registrations for the entrance examination are currently scheduled to open at the beginning of March. Further information on this new programme, on the main artistic subject of Electronics, and on entrance examination registration prerequisites can be found at ipop.at.
