Pluralism of methods and the variety of research topics and perspectives are considered essential prerequisites at the Department of Music. Our goal is to combine a clearly recognizable profiling with such a pluralistic and broad-based research and teaching practice. We do not strive for a profiling that goes hand in hand with one-sidedness, limitation and constriction, rather one that is stimulated and enriched by the scholarly examination of various methods, matters and questions. European and non-European music cultures are both subjects of research and teaching. Depending on the research question and the subject, archive research, philological work with sources, field research, structural analysis and cultural studies analysis are in the foreground. Accordingly, music and the phenomena related to it are examined from historical, ethnological, sociological, cultural-theoretical and formal points of view. We regard this variety of methods and questions as an essential characteristic of the Department. Furthermore, we endeavour to represent the subject in its entirety in research and teaching, and to further expand the offer. At the same time, there is a clear profiling through the examination of intermediality, with Gustav Mahler and the music of Viennese modernism, with cultural-scientific topics such as "music and politics", "music and cultural identities", "music and gender" or the research fields of "popular music", "music cultures of the polar regions", "music cultures of Oceania" and "folk music of the Alpine region". There are cooperations with the "Gustav Mahler Musikwochen" in Toblach/Dobbiaco, the "Innsbruck Festival of Early Music" and the "Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum". A cooperation with the "Bregenz Festival" is planned. Together with the colleagues of the "Free University of Bolzano" and the "Università degli Studi di Trento" we are working on the conception and realization of an "International Master Programme in Musicology".
