Job Title:  Associate Tutor in Music

Contact:  w.matthew@uea.ac.uk

Location:  Music Centre 0.14

Personal

Biography:  Matthew Werley was born in Allentown, Penn. (USA), and pursued musical and theological studies in America, the United Kingdom and Germany.  He taught music at various universities in the Philadelphia area, and was a tutor in music at the University of Cambridge between 2009 and 2011.  His research focuses on European musical traditions from 1750 to 1950, and he has a particular interest in opera studies.  In 2008, he was awarded a one-year research fellowship by the DAAD to pursue archival work at the Richard-Strauss-Institut in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Bavaria).  He received his doctorate in 2010 from the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) with a dissertation on the use of early music in the operas of Richard Strauss, a project supervised by Peter Franklin.

Several articles from his dissertation have recently appeared or will soon be forthcoming, and he is currently preparing a large-scale monograph on Strauss, as well as a series of articles on musical historicism.  Werley's on-going interest in opera studies has recently branched into twentieth-century Austrian literature, and he is currently collaborating with an eminent professor of comparative literature (Jeffrey B. Berlin) to produce a new critical edition and translation of correspondence dating from the early years of the Third Reich.  Other academic endeavours currently include work on Brahms and a reception study of the gavotte in nineteenth-century German salons.

Teaching

At UEA, Werley lectures for two first-year modules, Texts, and Styles & Ideas, as well as the second-year Tonal Analysis seminar.  He also supervises numerous undergraduate projects.

Publications

Recent Presentations 

Dr. Matthew Werley has presented his research widely, including at the annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, Royal Musical Association and Musicological Society of Australia.  He has also delivered talks to opera societies and on the radio, and is a regular consultant to Sotheby's on matters pertaining to Strauss manuscripts.  A selection of his talks is listed here:

‘Von Salonkleinigkeiten bis Moderne:  Toward a History of the Gavotte in late Nineteenth-Century Germany'.  Paper selected for the national meeting of the American Musicological Society, San Francisco, California (11 November 2011).

‘Dancing to History in the Salon:  Brahms's Occasional Piano Compositions and the Gavotte Revival in Nineteenth-century Germany'.  Paper selected for Brahms in the Home, Royal College of Music, London (6 November 2011).

‘Richard Strauss and the Politics of Mozart Reception'.  Invited talk at the Faculty of Music Colloquia Series, University of Cambridge (11 November 2009).

‘Nationalismus und Weltbürgertum im Werdegang Richard Strauss' zwischen ca. 1890 und 1914'.  Invited paper read at Richard Strauss im europäischen Kontext (60. Todestag von Richard Strauss /10 Jahre Richard-Strauss-Institut), Richard-Strauss-Institut, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany (7 September 2009).

‘Gluck on the Green Hill:  Richard Strauss's Iphigenie auf Tauris between historicism and Wagnerism'.  Paper read at the joint annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Royal Musical Association, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin (9 July 2009); The Politics of Opera, European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford (9 October 2009).

‘Strauss's Silent History'.  Invited paper read at the Graduate Student's Colloquia Series, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford (13 May 2008).

‘Analysing Arabella's Past'.  Paper read at the conference Strauss among the Scholars:  An International Forum, Magdalen College, University of Oxford (30 June 2007).

‘Maria Full of (dis)Grace?:  Female Agency and Fidelio Reception in Richard Strauss's Friedenstag'.  Paper read at the 28th National Meeting of the Musicological Society of Australia, ‘Music and Social Justice', University of Sydney/Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, Australia (28 September-1 October 2005); Music and Resistance:  1933-1945, Universität Salzburg, Austria (10-11 April 2006).

‘Of Confessions, Analysis, and Aesthetics in a Late-Beethoven Piano Sonata'.  Paper read at the Magdalen Research Forum, Magdalen College, University of Oxford (24 February 2005).

‘Aesthetics of the Word and Flesh:  Instrumental Recitative and the Syntax of Beethoven's Op. 110'.  Paper read at the Thirteenth International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, St. Chad's College, University of Durham (6-9 July 2004); Short version given at the Orpheus Instituut, Gent, Belgium (31 March 2005).

‘From Alienation to Abnegation:  Jenůfa and the Metaphysics of Musical and Dramatic Discourse at the Turn of Century'.  Paper read at the inaugural meeting of the Music Theory Society of the MidAtlantic, Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore, Maryland (5 April 2003); CUNY Graduate Students in Music Symposium, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York City (5 April 2003); University of Toronto Music Graduate Students Association, University of Toronto, Canada (12 April 2003).