Education policy shifts, socio-demographic developments, and recent studies point quite clearly to a continually growing need for qualified school music and music school teachers in the years to come. The mdw is responding to this situation with its promotional concept “Your Job: Music!”—an October-to-May series of comprehensive informational and preparatory offerings intended to help orient musically interested school students as they choose what to study and aim for as a career.

From 29 November to 5 December of last year, the third edition of the annual event Festwoche Musikpädagogik took place. This week-long festival enables all of the University’s music education programmes and departments to present themselves in their full artistic and pedagogical breadth. In doing so, the goal is to highlight the music education profession’s societal importance, spark an interest in music education among young people, and eliminate any inhibitions towards the University.

Music education is far more than “just” music class at school; it’s much rather a realm of complex interplay between art, pedagogy, and scientific and scholarly pursuits. This is borne out by the diverse opportunities for related study at the mdw, the numerous areas in which graduates and faculty are active, and a wide variety of educational and research projects.

The mdw’s music education offerings encompass numerous different degree programmes. In the following, teaching faculty members and students from the mdw’s Music Education (ME) and Music Education for Voice and Instruments (IGP) programmes discuss how music educators for regular schools and music schools are trained as well as the importance of artistic training in this context.

The Erasmus+ project ALIISA (“All In – International Inclusive Society in Arts”) ran from September 2020 to August 2023 and involved the mdw along with Finnish, Lithuanian, and German (arts) universities, universities of applied sciences, and music and dance schools.

As part of the course on Music Mediation/Community Music, itself part of the subject area “Music in Dialogue” at the mdw’s Department of Music Education Research, Music Didactics and Elementary Music Education, this past winter semester saw the project Tschick – ein Held? conducted with inmates at JVA Gerasdorf, a juvenile detention centre in Lower Austria.

How does the music education field deal with socio-political shifts, culturally relevant re-assessments of value, debates on norms, and new qualities?

mdw Rector Ulrike Sych and Harald Huber met with mdw Magazine to discuss educational shortcomings and solutions for the future.