Peter Hrncirik was born in Vienna in 1964.
He studied organ (master class) and music education at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He received his Master of Arts degree in 1990 and his doctorate of philosophy in 1996.
From 1988 to 2002, he worked as organist and music director at the Benedictine Abbey of Altenburg (Lower Austria). As the former conductor of the renowned Altenburg Boys’ Choir, he can look back on numerous radio, television, and CD productions, as well as international concert tours (including many European countries, Israel, and Japan).
Afterwards he worked for ten years as music teacher and school choir director at an Upper secondary school in Vienna (2003-2013). There he organized and directed major projects annually, including a staged performance of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” with a total of 200 participants.
From 2011 to 2017, he also taught at a University of Education in Vienna, where he was involved in primary school- and secondary school- teacher training. There, too, he was able to gain valuable methodological and didactic experience.
At the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) he has been working since 1994, i.e. for over 30 years. He began his work there with a research assignment in which he processed the scientific legacy of the famous harpsichordist Prof. Isolde Ahlgrimm, who died in 1995. In 2002, this research assignment was converted into a teaching assignment for the subjects “Musical Ornamentation for Organists, Harpsichordists and Pianists” as well as “Literature for Organists”. In 2012 he moved to the Anton Bruckner Institute for
choir and ensemble directing and harmony in music education. He teaches harmony, counterpoint and ear training there, since 2012 as a lecturer, since 2017 as a professor. Since 2018 he has also been deputy head of department. Compositional works as well as lectures, musicological publications and editions accompany his teaching activities. In 2024 he was the coordinator and organizer of 20BRUCKNER24, a large series of concerts and musicological lectures on the occasion of Anton Bruckner’s 200th birthday.
He also works as a writer. In 2022, he self-published a comprehensive music-historical novel about the last years of the life of the composer and music theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger.
Since 2018 he has been giving regular guest courses at the College of Music at Mahidol University in Salaya, initially on Basso continuo courses for pianists, and since 2022 on harmony with a focus on Functional theory at the department of music theory and composition. So far, three Mahidol students, inspired by his teaching, have spent a scholarship year in Austria, two of them at the Vienna mdw.
