Rate My Professor Simon Perry

Dr Simon Perry is a lecturer in musicology in the School of Music at the University of Queensland, Australia, where he serves as the Master of Music Program Convenor. He earned a Bachelor of Music (Honours) and a Master of Music from the University of Melbourne, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy from the School of Music at the University of Queensland in 1998. His PhD thesis, 'Musorgsky's orthography: an approach to tonal structures in his music,' established his expertise in analytical musicology. Perry lectures primarily in music techniques and music history, supporting students within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

His research specializations encompass the theory and analysis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music repertoires, early twentieth-century Russian music theory, and the music of Percy Grainger. Recent and forthcoming publications address notational analysis of late common-practice and early post-common-practice tonality, posthumous collaboration in Rimsky-Korsakov’s completion of Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina, and Percy Grainger's aesthetics via his unpublished autobiographical writings. Notable works include the textbook Music Research Essentials (2024, co-authored with Kat Lee, Adam McCarthy, and Felicity Berends); the chapter 'The Beauty of Bravery: alternative modernisms, de-historicizing Grainger' (2015, with Sarah Collins); 'Rimsky-Korsakov and Musorgsky: a posthumous collaboration?' (2014); 'Pitch-notational analysis: a basis for an approach to understanding harmonic thinking in common-practice and post common-practice tonality' (2013); journal articles 'A voice unknown: Undercurrents in Mussorgsky's Sunless' (2004), 'Agonising over orthography: Aspects of notation from Tristan to Opus 11, number 1' (2003), 'Grainger's autobiographical writings: New light on old questions' (2001), and 'Musorgsky's Gnomus composer’s score as analytical text' (1999). These contributions highlight his impact on music theory and Russian music scholarship.