Exilarte – Center for Banned Music, which joined our institution as an mdw Research Center in 2016, has now spent two decades devoting itself to the musical estates of individuals who were persecuted, forced into exile, or murdered by the National Socialists—thereby preserving a significant chapter of European music history that might have been lost forever without its efforts.

In the arts, it is possible for multiple superlatives to exist side by side—for which reason this author hopes it won’t be taken amiss that he considers the concert series “Echo of the Unheard” to be the most important one in Viennese musical life. This series affords an experience of how an entire, fully valid era of music history exists of which Arnold Schönberg, Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, Egon Wellesz, Erich Zeisl, Ursula Mamlok, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Ruth Schönthal, and Marcel Rubin are just a few representatives among the approximately one hundred composers whose works it has included so far.

This year will see Exilarte, Center for Banned Music—founded as a private association and institutionalised as part of the mdw in 2016—celebrate 20 years of existence. In the following anniversary conversation, Exilarte head Gerold W. Gruber surveys what has been achieved and what still remains to be done.

In the following interview with mdw Magazine, Ursula Hemetek—former head of the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology and founder of the Music and Minorities Research Centre (MMRC)—joins us together with the department’s current head Marko Kölbl to look back upon its eventful history, share insights on current developments, and discuss present-day political challenges.

The fact that cultural and above all musical diversity have (and indeed must have) an established place at our university is what this issue’s Special serves to highlight.

The introduction of the Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology at the mdw in October 2019 brought initially subtle but steadily building change to our institution that has, in fact, ended up being quite broad-based. For the first time in the mdw’s 200-year history, it became possible to study styles of music and dance that had previously lacked any representation in an academic context, doing so via both research-based exploration and artistic practice.

With its international symposium “Between Research and Activism: Futures of Music and Minority Studies”, scheduled to take place from 12 to 14 February 2026, the Music and Minorities Research Center (MMRC) will be ushering in a new phase of its existence. As part of this, the MMRC—founded in 2019 to pursue research on music and minorities—plans to celebrate its initial seven years.

The mdw’s Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology, which is Austria’s largest place of research and teaching in its field, has existed at the mdw for 60 years. It’s hence no wonder that the department’s history is commonly viewed as having begun in 1965. However, folk music as well as research on folk music had been present here long before.

The Music and Minorities Research Center of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna is currently hosting the research project “Sounds of Trauma: Naga Song Responses to Political Conflict” led by Christian Poske and funded by an ESPRIT research grant of the Austrian Science Fund. It began in August 2024 and is slated to run through July 2027.