University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

For the freedom of art, science and teaching is an unmistakable guiding principle

Austria was the home of many of Hitler's most important musical victims, the best known of whom have already become established culturally historic figures. Yet others still await their discovery or, more often, their re-discovery. Gaping holes exist where they have not been incorporated into rightful positions within Austrian musicology or performance-practice. exil.arte is a center of the mdw and operates as a centre for the reception, preservation, research and presentation of Austrian composers, performers, musical academics and thinkers who, during the years of the 'Third Reich' were branded as 'degenerate'. Only within recent decades has Austria started to address this issue. The assessment and restitution of such a multi-facetted cultural inheritance, extending from the 19th century through, operetta, film music and 'chanson', cabaret, and the developments of the 'Second Viennese School', 'Jugendstil', 'New Objectivity' and much more is an enormous, multi-disciplinary undertaking.exil.arte's purpose is to restore these important missing links to the chain of Austrian music-history. " The society exil.arte lets us hear voices again that were silenced, bringing music that was brutally suppressed to our ears – and thereby also to our heart " - Thomas Angyan (Artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna). The mdw is among the world's leading universities specialised in music, theatre, and film. As an international leader for studies in music and other performing arts along with related academic disciplines since since 1817 , the university currently provides training to close to 3,000 students from over 70 countries in 115 degree programmes and 41 supplementary programmes run by 24 departments . It also is the workplace of ca. 1,260 individuals and presents over 1,300 artistic, scholarly and scientific events each year , making it Austria's largest organiser of cultural events