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.

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.

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.

It’s whenever multiple crises play out simultaneously that the key ways in which universities foster lively, society-wide discourse become particularly clear—in light of which the following pages introduce mdw projects that put common ground and dialogue firmly in focus.

Anyone who knows the composer Antonio Salieri merely as a supposed rival of Mozart will have a chance to change this in 2025. In connection with the 200th anniversary of Salieri’s death and his upcoming 275th birthday, we take a fresh look here at the man whom we have to thank for today’s mdw.

In artistic endeavours, much like it is with other pursuits, urgent issues pertaining to climate change are more and more often coming to play a central role. Artists’ approaches to this theme are myriad.

It’s a mixture of curiosity, enthusiasm, and perhaps anxiety that can often arise when the talk turns to AI technologies’ deployment in our everyday private and professional lives. At home, it might be a robovac that’s supposed to save us work but—How could it be otherwise?—ends up repeatedly needing help. In academic and artistic contexts, on the other hand, it’s about things like questions of authorship, innovation, and inspiration.

What is KlangBildKlang? This large-scale mdw project, whose name translates as “SoundImageSound”, may indeed evoke the odd question. Is the focus on sound, here, or actually more on visual depiction? The answer is neither-nor. It’s much rather about interaction—between not just sounds and images, but also people, mdw departments, performing venues, and organisations.

Special birthdays make it possible to regard artists’ works in a new light, reinterpret them, and perhaps also spot things that had previously gone undiscovered, with new approaches to familiar things facilitating the understanding of new aspects. In this spirit, the current special invites you to find out just how multifaceted the outstanding composers Anton Bruckner and Arnold Schönberg were.

Exile can take on many forms. In rare cases it might be chosen and voluntary. However, most exiled individuals have been driven away, banished, politically persecuted, or stripped of their citizenship—with no choice but to leave the places they called home.