The Franz Schmidt Organ Competition was first held in 2006 and has taken place every two years since then. Its initiator was the mdw organ professor Rudolf Scholz (1933–2012), who headed our university’s Department of Keyboard Instruments. As a tireless advocate and promotor of Franz Schmidt’s organ works, his ultimate intent was to help make Schmidt better known.

The thinking of French philosopher and musicologist Vladimir Jankélévitch has been known to German-speaking readers since 2016 thanks to a formidable translation of his 1961 tract La Musique et l’Ineffable (Music and the Ineffable).