This issue’s Special reveals just how important—and experientially rich—the mdw’s diverse international activities are. We introduce you to the wide breadth of opportunities that mdw students, faculty, and administrative employees enjoy when it comes to international visits and how such instances of mobility end up leading to long-term projects time and time again.

The mdw is internationally and globally networked, with students from over 70 nations and some 190 partner universities from every continent. This vibrant exchange benefits students, teachers, and administrative staff who travel to our partner institutions or come from them to the mdw.

It was in 1994 that Ališer Sijarić, a composing student at the Sarajevo Music Academy, received an mdw scholarship to continue his studies far off from the ongoing war. Now a well-regarded composer and educator, Sijarić is following in some illustrious footsteps as the dean of his Bosnian alma mater.

For many years, now, isa – the International Summer Academy of the mdw has been viewed as one of the most prestigious summer courses for up-and-coming talents hailing from all over the world. This year’s inaugural Viennese edition of isa took place at the innovative mdw Campus, where young musicians came together in order to hone their abilities, network internationally, and expand their artistic horizons in high-intensity master class sessions, workshops, and concerts.

I am Maryam Zuhuri. I study directing at Film Academy Vienna, where I’m currently enrolled in my second semester.

Franz Kafka’s close confidant Max Brod is said to have coined the oft-quoted saying according to which Prague was one hundred percent Czech, one hundred percent Jewish, and one hundred percent German. This paradoxical ascription points to the complex cultural makeup of Bohemia’s capital city, where ethnic, linguistic, and religious affiliations existed not distinctly side-by-side but as a dense web of relationships. The Prague of that era stood alongside Vienna as an important cultural centre of the Habsburg Monarchy in which imperial, national, and transnational influences overlapped.

When one thinks of the popular music of Yugoslavia, it’s frequently that country’s well-researched rock and punk music that come to mind—genres that are ascribed a political and subversive character. Disco, in contrast, has been viewed as apolitical and commercial and hence received commensurately less attention. It is with the comparatively little-researched area of Yugoslav disco that this special issue of the open-access journal TheMA therefore deals.

When a musician takes a bow to a string instrument, they rely on technique and intuition to produce a desired tone. But what exactly defines the limits of playability and the quality of the sound? What factors influence string vibration, and which of these depend on the player’s technique versus the string itself?