Rosamund Shuter

Rosamund Shuter was a psychologist who had a great interest in music and musical abilities. She was a founder-member of the Society for Research in Psychology of Music and Music Education (SRPMME – now SEMPRE) and later a distinguished editor of its journal Psychology of Music. Rosamund presented her doctoral research at London University in 1964 on An Investigation of Hereditary and Environmental Factors in Musical Ability.  This theme became a principal thrust of her subsequent work, which over a period of thirty years brought some thirty papers in professional journals, many of them in the  Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education  (CRME). Her first book The Psychology of Musical Ability (1968) became a go-to resource for anyone interested in the field and still, after 60 years since its first publication, provides a valuable background to this area of research.  Rosamund was a person of great charm, and in her later years her religion became a great support in her life and lead to several researches on the beliefs and attitudes of church musicians.