History of the former Centre for Systematic Musicology
Austrian composers are known worldwide: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern. Austria's leading scientific figures of the past include Sigmund Freud, Erwin Schrödinger, Lise Meitner, Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kurt Gödel and Konrad Lorenz. The Czech-Austrian pacifist Bertha von Suttner was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.
The term "systematic musicology" was coined by Guido Adler in Austria in 1885. In the following decades, German-speaking musicologists increasingly focussed on “systematic” issues. Before and during the Second World War, numerous leading scientists and musicians emigrated to North America - including (systematic) musicologists. In the decades following the war, systematic musicology established itself in North America and internationally as an independent field of research, often referred to as "Music Perception and Cognition". At the same time, the central European tradition of systematic musicology was continued by the German Society for Music Psychology (from 1983).
In the closing decades of the 20th century, professorships with the title "Systematic Musicology" began to be advertised in Germany. In 1997, a Professorship for Systematic Musicology was advertised at the University of Graz by Rudolf Flotzinger, Professor of Musicology. Richard Parncutt (an Australian physicist, musicologist, and music psychologist) was appointed to the professorship in 1998. On 9 October 2009, the Centre for Systematic Musicology was opened by the then Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Gernot Kocher, in the Wall Building (Merangasse 70, 8010 Graz). Under Parncutt's leadership, the centre became Austria's leading research institution in the field of systematic musicology and one of the few such leading research centres in the world.
Graz is proud of its four universities, which could be categorized as "general", "artistic", "technical" and "medical". Music is relevant for each. At the beginning of the 21st century, music research was happening in five departments of Graz universities: one at the University of Graz (musicology) and four at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (ethnomusicology, music aesthetics, jazz research, electronic music and acoustics). In 2006, these five departments created a joint BA/MA program in Musicology. The program was exceptional in its disciplinary diversity, bringing together expertise in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, music philosophy, jazz and popular music, music acoustics, music information sciences, and music psychology. The Centre for Systematic Musicology made the greatest contribution to the interdisciplinarity of this degree programme with its focus on empirical/theoretical psychology and interdisciplinarity among natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.
The following colleagues contributed to the centre's success:
Professor: Richard Parncutt
Lecturer/researchers: Bernd Brabec de Mori, Ella Prem, Peter Schneider, Annemarie Seither-Preisler
Guest lecturers: Bernd Brabec de Mori, Manuela Marin, Martin Winter
Postdoc researchers: Erica Bisesi, Markus Christiner, Alfonso Meave, Andrea Schiavio, Tatevik Shakhkulyan
Doctoral students: Siavosh Banihashemi, Bryony Buck, Zuzana Cenkerová, Julie Delisle, Helena Dukic, Valentina Jerenec-Šmigoc, Adrian Kempf, Daniela Prem, Britta Richter, Sabrina Sattmann, Anita Taschler, Sabrina Turker, Karim Weth, Bettina Zeidler
Project assistants: Hande Sağlam, Sabrina Sattmann
Conference co-organizers: Martina Koegeler, Sabrina Sattmann, Simone Schumann
Student assistants: Lukas Auer, Marlies Bodinger, Jonas Böhm, Maximilian Burkard, Lina Dornhofer, Florian Eckl, Elisabeth Felber, Andreas Gaich, Valentin Grbic, Hannes Karlbauer, Fabio Kaiser, Lukas Kummer, Johannes Lehner, Jakob Leitner, Stéphanie Lüders, Maria Ortner, Nils Meyer-Kahlen, Katharina Pollack, Lazar Radovanovic, Magdalena Ramsey, Daniel Reisinger, Sabrina Sattmann, Theresa Schallmoser, Noemi Silvestri, Lara Spitzley, Sonja Zechner, Martin Winter
Office managers: Anja Dörfler, Theresa Halbritter, Gerlinde Knaus, Stéphanie Lüders, Michaela Schwarz, Sandra Tanzmeister, Evelyn Zemmel
Academic advisory board: Andreas Dorschel, Gerhard Eckel, Andreas Schwerdtfeger, Annemarie Seither-Preisler
The centre was dissolved with the retirement of Richard Parncutt in 2023. In its place, a new section entitled "Music Psychology and Brain Research" was established in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Sciences, University of Graz.