Richard Parncutt: Overview of research

Overview of research
Richard Parncutt

Areas and interests

My research is not confined to a specific topic or issue, but is spread over several different areas of music psychology:

structure: perception of pitch, consonance, harmony, tonality, melody, counterpoint, tension, rhythm, meter, accent

performance: psychology of music performance, piano performance, applications in music education

origins: nature and origins of harmony, tonality, meter; role of prenatal conditioning in the phylogenesis and ontogenesis of music; evolutionary music psychology

interdisciplinarity: interaction between musical humanities, sciences and practice

interculturality: familiarity and cultural identity in music perception

modelling: psychoacoustic/cognitive theories and computer-assisted applications in music theory, musicianship, composition

My publications are often peer-reviewed and cited.

Board membership

I contribute actively to the management and development of academic quality through peer review processes in musicology (e.g. CIM, JIMS), music psychology, and other areas of systematic musicology. I am (or was) a member of the academic boards of all leading music psychology journals and many conferences in the area of systematic musicology.

Invitations to conferences

Between 2000 and 2006, I received 14 invitations (of which I accepted 12) to report the results and implications of my research at conferences in the following countries: A (4), D (3), I (2), GB (2), CAN (1), AUS (1), E (1). details

Synergizing musicological epistemologies
Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM) - Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies (JIMS)

I conceived and organised the first CIM in Graz in 2004. The conference became a series and I contribute to the planning and organization of each event. The aim of CIM is to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and quality control in all areas of musicology. CIM is promoted by leading international societies (IMS, ESCOM, ESEM) and each conference addresses a theme that is of interest to most musicological subdisciplines. Since 2007, I have also been academic editor of JIMS, an international peer-review journal based on the CIM concept. I have invested a lot of time and energy into CIM and JIMS because I believe that they can make a significant long-term contribution to research productivity in musicology.

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Richard Parncutt, Department of Musicology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Graz