The How and Why of Music
The Centre for Systematic Musicology promotes research and teaching in all areas of systematic musicology, focusing on music psychology. The centre also promotes interdisciplinary interactions among systematic musicology, its “parent disciplines” (e.g. psychology), and other musical disciplines (e.g. ethnomusicology). The centre contributes to international research in sys
tematic musicology through publications, the creation and maintenance of infrastructures, and the promotion of synergetic collaborations among humanities, sciences and musical practice. History of the Centre - SysMusGraz
The Centre for Systematic Musicology was opened on 9 October 2009 in Wallgebäude (Merangasse 70) by the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Gernot Kocher. The creation of the centre was originally made possible by Rudolf Flotzinger, Professor of Musicology at the University of Graz. During the 1990s, he established Austria's first full Professorship in Systematic Musicology. The position was filled in1998 by Richard Parncutt. Born in Australia in 1957, Parncutt studied music, physics, and psychology in Australia before taking up postdocs and teaching positions in Stockholm, Berlin, Halifax, Montreal, and Keele (UK). In 2009, Parncutt became the director of the Centre for Systematic Musicology, and Bernd Brabec de Mori became the centre’s pre-doc assistant (a 4-year part-time research and teaching position). In 2014 Annemarie Seither-Preisler takes over the centre's assistant position as a post-doc. The detailed history of the centre is documented in the annual reports as well as in the chronology of activities. Research and teaching
The centre promotes research and teaching in all subdisciplines of SysMus. Our core discipline is music psychology; subsidiary disciplines include physics, neuroscience, history, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, and computer science of music. The centre draws its primary innovative potential from interdisciplinary synergies. Our research projects bring together and balance contributions from sciences, humanities and practice. We realize these aims internationally through the series Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM) and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies (JIMS).
