For those who’ve thus far heard music by Orlando di Lasso performed mainly as a cappella “vocal music”, Bernhard Rainer’s book presents an opportunity to discover some new aspects—such as how Lasso effectively staged music via its arrangement, instrumentation, and richly varied performance.

It’s widely acknowledged that the Global North’s existing set of rules in terms of performance clothing and onstage behaviour can be traced back to the bourgeois culture that was in the process of becoming established during the 19th century. This was a period that also gave rise to public concert life, concert halls, and concert culture.

“Our past is also our future” (Unsere Vergangenheit ist auch unsere Zukunft) is the motto that heads the homepage of the Fritz Kreisler Department—a wonderful match in light of not only the Viennese string sound, but also the Department’s most recent project: the online presentation of the Karl Scheit Archive.

This newly published dissertation (2015) by Wei-Ya Lin promises insights into the “holistic musical concept” of an indigenous population known as the Tao on Lanyu (one of the islands of Taiwan) “that is inseparably interwoven with all areas of life”.

“Facing Ethnic Drag”, a long-planned mdw Gender Studies conference, had to be repeatedly postponed because of the pandemic. Finally, on June 17, it was at least possible to hold this year’s kick-off event on a virtual stage with a keynote by Jay Pather and an artist talk with Mamela Nyamza.

Contesting Border Regimes – Sounds and Images was the title of 2021’s international symposium Transkulturalität_mdw, which took place online on 7 and 8 May.

A symposium and a lecture series that took place in 2018 at the mdw have now given rise to the open-access multi-author volume Knowing in Performing, which includes contributions in English and German.

After a flat, circular artifact reminiscent of a compact disc had been found in Vienna’s Auer-Welsbach Park back in June of 2019, it took quite some analytical work to determine that it was indeed a digital data medium containing a lengthy message of unclear origin.

The theme of this multiauthor volume, which presents lectures from the 29th Annual Conference of the German Society for Popular Music Studies, hits a socio-political nerve for more reasons than just the increasingly nation-centred coronavirus mitigation strategies.