Richard Parncutt
Biographic Data
| ID | 1609376 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Parncutt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Parncutt |
| SIGNATURE | PARNCUTT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Graz |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1332-7841 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The global multi-hub conference
Single-location international academic conferences are neither inclusive nor sustainable. The per-capita emissions are comparable with the global-average annual personal carbon footprint. Colleagues who cannot afford travel, accommodation, and registration are excluded. A multi-hub conference is open to colleagues from almost anywhere while at the same time enabling deep cuts in emissions and maintaining constant face-to-face contact within hubs.…
The Origin of the Dominant
In major‐minor tonality, V implies I, and rising fourths, falling thirds and rising seconds between successive chord roots are more common than falling fourths, rising thirds and falling seconds respectively. Possible explanations involve history (in two‐part medieval counterpoint, harmonic major sixths resolved to octaves – maintained in V–I); the rising leading note (V–I includes it, IV–I does not); acoustic speculation (in V–I, the third harmo…
The missing fundamentals of harmonic theory
Since Lippius and Rameau, chords have roots that are often voiced in the bass, doubled, and used as labels. Psychological experiments and analyses of databases of Western classical music have not produced clear evidence for the psychological reality of chord roots. We analyzed a symbolic database of 100 arrangements of jazz standards (musical instrument digital interface [MIDI] files from midkar.com and thejazzpage.de ). Selection criteria were r…
Processes and Experiences of Creative Cognition in Seven Western Classical Composers
In a qualitative study, we explored the range of reflections and experiences involved in the composition of score-based music by administering a 15-item, open-ended, questionnaire to seven professional composers from Europe and North America. Adopting a grounded theory approach, we organized six different codes emerging from our data into two higher-order categories ( the act of composing and establishing relationships). Our content analysis, ins…
Live streaming at international academic conferences
Reply to Kamil Łuczaj and Magdalena Holy Łuczaj (2019). Live streaming at international academic conferences: Cooling down the digital optimism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.435
Octave-generalized analysis of chord progressions
In a representative historical database of musical scores, a sonority was defined at every onset in any voice. For eight trichords—major (047), minor (037), suspended (027), diminished (036), 015, 045, 025, 035—immediately preceding and following sonorities were analysed. Chroma prevalence profiles depended surprisingly little on century or temporal position—especially for major/minor trichords (cf. Krumhansl’s key profiles). Profiles for nine no…
Learning Music From Each Other
In an experimental study, we investigated how well novices can learn from each other in situations of technology-aided musical skill acquisition, comparing joint and solo learning, and learning through imitation, synchronization, and turn-taking. Fifty-four participants became familiar, either solo or in pairs, with three short musical melodies and then individually performed each from memory. Each melody was learned in a different way: participa…
A matter of presence
In the current study, 11 expert music teachers were asked to reflect on their own practice and compare their experience of individual and collective teaching settings. Adopting an approach based on grounded theory, two interrelated themes were identified in the raw data: teaching issues and professional development. In both categories, the notion of ‘presence’ emerged as a defining feature of the comparison. Teachers reported to be less present i…
Chuckrow’s theory of the prenatal origin of music
In 1965, the second author, a graduate student in physics at New York University, drafted a paper entitled “Music: A synthesis of prenatal stimuli,” in which he proposed that structural elements of music such as rhythm and melody are analogs of fetal stimuli. In the 1980s, the first author independently published a similar theory. Both authors considered fetal perception of internal body sounds, correlations between those sounds and maternal stat…
Live streaming at international academic conferences
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the long tradition of political failures to address it have created an unprecedented global crisis. Individual carbon footprints are higher in industrialized countries; in that context, academics contribute substantially by flying to conferences. How and why should the global academic community respond to this situation? We evaluate the seriousness and urgency of AGW, consider relevant ethical theory, and co…
Live-streaming at international academic conferences
Internet-based communication technologies can reduce both carbon emissions and financial costs of academic conferences for individual participants—especially those from non-rich countries. We consider currently available technological solutions and logistic formats. In July 2018, we organized the leading international conference on music cognition (ICMPC15/ESCOM10) as a multiple-location, semi-virtual event with hubs on four continents (Europe, N…
Pitch-class prevalence in plainchant, scale-degree consonance, and the origin of the rising leading tone
The most common tones in Medieval plainchant were G and D; the least common, B. I propose that individual scale degrees differed in perceived consonance depending on the number of audible partials (harmonics) corresponding to scale degrees. The first ten harmonics of G correspond to scale degrees (G, D, B, F, A), but not those of B (B, F#, D#, A, C#). More consonant tones were sung more often and became more stable (reference pitches). Tones C an…
Andrzej Rakowski 1931–2018, internationally distinguished scholar and founding member of Escom
Mother–infant attachment, musical idol worship, and the origins of human behaviour
Actors, sportspeople, and politicians may be idolised for their appearance, personality, skills, or ideals. The idolisation of musicians additionally involves transcendental musical emotions. Fans devote extraordinary amounts of time, energy and money to following, empathising with, identifying with and imitating their idols. During great performances, fans experience altered states of consciousness. Existing evolutionary approaches can explain s…
The emotional connotations of major versus minor tonality
The association between major/minor tonality and positive/negative emotional valence is psychologically robust, but without a single accepted explanation. I compare six partially related theories. Dissonance: On average, passages in minor keys are more dissonant because, on average, the minor triad is more dissonant (rougher, less harmonic) or because tonal structure is more complex. Alterity and markedness: Major triads and scales are more commo…
Prenatal and infant conditioning, the mother schema, and the origins of music and religion
Existing theories of the origins of music and religion fail to account directly and convincingly for their universal emotional power and behavioural costliness. The theory of prenatal origins is based on empirically observable phenomena and involves prenatal classical conditioning, postnatal operant conditioning and the adaptive value of mother-infant bonding. The human fetus can perceive sound and acceleration from gestational week 20. The most …
Introduction
The Science & Psychology of Music Performance
Music educators and practicing musicians have failed to benefit as much as they could from the past two decades of music psychology research. In this book, the authors propose to improve the situation by describing new approaches, informed by recent psychological research, to teaching music, learning music, and making music at all educational levels. Each chapter represents the collaboration between a music psychologist and a music educator. The …
The science & psychology of music performance
Absolute pitch
Psychology of music
Reply to Balsach
Listening to music in the real world? A critical discussion of Marc Leman's (1995) music and schema theory
Leman's recent book is examined from both musical and scientific perspectives. The book describes an important new development in the context‐sensitive modeling of musical pitch perception, and a promising basis for the modeling of other musical parameters such as timbre, and even emotion. The main advantage of the approach is its ecological validity: as far as current limitations of knowledge and technology allow, the model realistically simulat…
Talking Fingers
Seven professional pianists were interviewed to gather their views on various aspects of piano fingering. The issues covered included technical considerations, the influence of interpretation and composers' markings on fingering, the effects of different Performance circumstances, and the role of teachers in determining fingering strategies. An analysis of the participants' responses revealed both a considerable amount of common ground in their a…
Response to Demske
1] Thomas Demske's thorough treatment of the similarity of pc-sets demonstrates how problematical it can be to derive a general and yet musically relevant similarity function.The essay highlights inherent weaknesses in the pc-set paradigm for post-tonal analysis, and suggests that perceptually based approaches may be more appropriate than approaches based purely on pc-sets.[2] First, there seems to be a tacit problem of definition.What exactly do…
Pitch-class prevalence in plainchant, scale-degree consonance, and the origin of the rising leading tone
The most common tones in Medieval plainchant were G and D; the least common, B. I propose that individual scale degrees differed in perceived consonance depending on the number of audible partials (harmonics) corresponding to scale degrees. The first ten harmonics of G correspond to scale degrees (G, D, B, F, A), but not those of B (B, F#, D#, A, C#). More consonant tones were sung more often and became more stable (reference pitches). Tones C an…
Pitch properties of chords of octave-spaced tones
Listeners were presented with simultaneities of 1,2,3, or 4 octave-spaced (Shepard tones). In Experiment 1, they were asked how many tones they heard in each chord (its multiplicity). In Experiment 2, they heard a chord followed by a tone, and were asked how well the tone went with the chord; this resulted in a tone profile for each chord. In Experiment 3, they heard successive pairs of chords, and were asked to rate their similarity. The experim…
Commentary on Justin London (MTO 0.2)
1] I'd like to return to the recent analyses of Justin London's rhythm example by Robert Judd and myself.JL's Example 3 began with the 6 notes C D E F G A, where all notes had the same duration except the last (A) which was longer.[2] The story so far: I looked at the phenomenal accent
Pitch properties of chords of octave-spaced tones
Listeners were presented with simultaneities of 1,2,3, or 4 octave-spaced (Shepard tones). In Experiment 1, they were asked how many tones they heard in each chord (its multiplicity). In Experiment 2, they heard a chord followed by a tone, and were asked how well the tone went with the chord; this resulted in a tone profile for each chord. In Experiment 3, they heard successive pairs of chords, and were asked to rate their similarity. The experim…
Template-matching models of musical pitch and rhythm perception
The perception of familiar patterns in pitch and time may be modeled by template matching. Music‐perceptual templates may be represented graphically as sets of appropriately weighted template elements or features, defined relative to each other by fixed (but approximate) time or frequency ratios. The salience of a sensation arising from the recognition of a pattern may be estimated from the goodness of fit between a template and an incoming stimu…
Response to Demske
1] Thomas Demske's thorough treatment of the similarity of pc-sets demonstrates how problematical it can be to derive a general and yet musically relevant similarity function.The essay highlights inherent weaknesses in the pc-set paradigm for post-tonal analysis, and suggests that perceptually based approaches may be more appropriate than approaches based purely on pc-sets.[2] First, there seems to be a tacit problem of definition.What exactly do…
Talking Fingers
Seven professional pianists were interviewed to gather their views on various aspects of piano fingering. The issues covered included technical considerations, the influence of interpretation and composers' markings on fingering, the effects of different Performance circumstances, and the role of teachers in determining fingering strategies. An analysis of the participants' responses revealed both a considerable amount of common ground in their a…
Reply to Balsach
Listening to music in the real world? A critical discussion of Marc Leman's (1995) music and schema theory
Leman's recent book is examined from both musical and scientific perspectives. The book describes an important new development in the context‐sensitive modeling of musical pitch perception, and a promising basis for the modeling of other musical parameters such as timbre, and even emotion. The main advantage of the approach is its ecological validity: as far as current limitations of knowledge and technology allow, the model realistically simulat…
Absolute pitch
Psychology of music
The Science & Psychology of Music Performance
Music educators and practicing musicians have failed to benefit as much as they could from the past two decades of music psychology research. In this book, the authors propose to improve the situation by describing new approaches, informed by recent psychological research, to teaching music, learning music, and making music at all educational levels. Each chapter represents the collaboration between a music psychologist and a music educator. The …
The science & psychology of music performance
Introduction
Prenatal and infant conditioning, the mother schema, and the origins of music and religion
Existing theories of the origins of music and religion fail to account directly and convincingly for their universal emotional power and behavioural costliness. The theory of prenatal origins is based on empirically observable phenomena and involves prenatal classical conditioning, postnatal operant conditioning and the adaptive value of mother-infant bonding. The human fetus can perceive sound and acceleration from gestational week 20. The most …
The emotional connotations of major versus minor tonality
The association between major/minor tonality and positive/negative emotional valence is psychologically robust, but without a single accepted explanation. I compare six partially related theories. Dissonance: On average, passages in minor keys are more dissonant because, on average, the minor triad is more dissonant (rougher, less harmonic) or because tonal structure is more complex. Alterity and markedness: Major triads and scales are more commo…
Andrzej Rakowski 1931–2018, internationally distinguished scholar and founding member of Escom
Mother–infant attachment, musical idol worship, and the origins of human behaviour
Actors, sportspeople, and politicians may be idolised for their appearance, personality, skills, or ideals. The idolisation of musicians additionally involves transcendental musical emotions. Fans devote extraordinary amounts of time, energy and money to following, empathising with, identifying with and imitating their idols. During great performances, fans experience altered states of consciousness. Existing evolutionary approaches can explain s…
Chuckrow’s theory of the prenatal origin of music
In 1965, the second author, a graduate student in physics at New York University, drafted a paper entitled “Music: A synthesis of prenatal stimuli,” in which he proposed that structural elements of music such as rhythm and melody are analogs of fetal stimuli. In the 1980s, the first author independently published a similar theory. Both authors considered fetal perception of internal body sounds, correlations between those sounds and maternal stat…
Live streaming at international academic conferences
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the long tradition of political failures to address it have created an unprecedented global crisis. Individual carbon footprints are higher in industrialized countries; in that context, academics contribute substantially by flying to conferences. How and why should the global academic community respond to this situation? We evaluate the seriousness and urgency of AGW, consider relevant ethical theory, and co…
Live-streaming at international academic conferences
Internet-based communication technologies can reduce both carbon emissions and financial costs of academic conferences for individual participants—especially those from non-rich countries. We consider currently available technological solutions and logistic formats. In July 2018, we organized the leading international conference on music cognition (ICMPC15/ESCOM10) as a multiple-location, semi-virtual event with hubs on four continents (Europe, N…
Pitch-class prevalence in plainchant, scale-degree consonance, and the origin of the rising leading tone
The most common tones in Medieval plainchant were G and D; the least common, B. I propose that individual scale degrees differed in perceived consonance depending on the number of audible partials (harmonics) corresponding to scale degrees. The first ten harmonics of G correspond to scale degrees (G, D, B, F, A), but not those of B (B, F#, D#, A, C#). More consonant tones were sung more often and became more stable (reference pitches). Tones C an…
Learning Music From Each Other
In an experimental study, we investigated how well novices can learn from each other in situations of technology-aided musical skill acquisition, comparing joint and solo learning, and learning through imitation, synchronization, and turn-taking. Fifty-four participants became familiar, either solo or in pairs, with three short musical melodies and then individually performed each from memory. Each melody was learned in a different way: participa…
A matter of presence
In the current study, 11 expert music teachers were asked to reflect on their own practice and compare their experience of individual and collective teaching settings. Adopting an approach based on grounded theory, two interrelated themes were identified in the raw data: teaching issues and professional development. In both categories, the notion of ‘presence’ emerged as a defining feature of the comparison. Teachers reported to be less present i…
Live streaming at international academic conferences
Reply to Kamil Łuczaj and Magdalena Holy Łuczaj (2019). Live streaming at international academic conferences: Cooling down the digital optimism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.435
Octave-generalized analysis of chord progressions
In a representative historical database of musical scores, a sonority was defined at every onset in any voice. For eight trichords—major (047), minor (037), suspended (027), diminished (036), 015, 045, 025, 035—immediately preceding and following sonorities were analysed. Chroma prevalence profiles depended surprisingly little on century or temporal position—especially for major/minor trichords (cf. Krumhansl’s key profiles). Profiles for nine no…
Processes and Experiences of Creative Cognition in Seven Western Classical Composers
In a qualitative study, we explored the range of reflections and experiences involved in the composition of score-based music by administering a 15-item, open-ended, questionnaire to seven professional composers from Europe and North America. Adopting a grounded theory approach, we organized six different codes emerging from our data into two higher-order categories ( the act of composing and establishing relationships). Our content analysis, ins…
Neuroscience and Music Perception (16 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Art (10 works) · Musical (10 works) · Music Technology and Sound Studies (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Diverse Music Education Insights (7 works) · Acoustics (6 works) · Physics (6 works)