In February 2024, Zeller co-authored “Diversity in Music Corpus Studies,” in Music Theory Online 30:1. The article posits that social factors such as the biases that create power imbalances among genders and races exert influence on corpuses of works drawn up on the basis of a society’s activities and preferences (e.g., “best of” rankings). In addition to laying bare the dynamics underlying this phenomenon, the authors propose the Anti-Discriminatory Alignment System (ADAS). Applied to a parent corpus, ADAS may be used to derive output corpora that can shape representation as desired among a set of chosen demographics. The article also introduces a new corpus of works and the first stage of analytical results in the Timbre in Popular Song (TIPS) project.
In August 2022, Matthew Zeller became Curator for Europe at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. At MIM, he is responsible for acquiring and interpreting musical instruments, bringing musicology to the public through object-driven narratives. Some of his recent acquisitions for MIM include a violin by Andrea Amati (1560s), a flute by Theobald Boehm (1850s), and a pochette used at the court of Henry IV of France (c. 1600).
After completing his Ph.D. in 2020, Zeller held an ACTOR Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.
Matthew Zeller published "Klangfarbenmelodie, Chromophony, and Timbral Function in Arnold Schoenberg’s 'Farben'" in Music Theory Online 29:3. Music Theory Online is a journal of the Society for Music Theory. ABSTRACT: Arnold Schoenberg’s concept of Klangfarbenmelodie (melody of timbres) is one of the most important yet least understood compositional innovations of the twentieth century. By examining significant factors in Klangfarbenmelodie’s theoretical formulation, proposing functional roles that timbre can fulfill, and locating examples of timbre realizing those musical functions in “Farben,” the third of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16, this article demonstrates some of the ways timbre can shape music and our musical experience. While musical logic based on timbre operates according to laws of its own, not those of pitch, parallels can nonetheless be drawn between harmonic functions and timbral functions. Timbral developments are shown to articulate the formal process in “Farben” and create coherent progressions, modulations, and cadences that illustrate some possibilities of how timbre can function in music.
Previously, Zeller published "Klangfarbenmelodie in 1911: Timbre's Functional Roles in Webern's Opp. 9 and 10" in Music Theory Online 28:1. ABSTRACT: Anton Webern’s pre-World War I aphoristic works sometimes appear to defy comprehension, but through the lens of Klangfarbenmelodie organizing principles of this music come into focus. Klangfarbenmelodie is a multifaceted principle of musical organization. It is how Klangfarbenfolgen—timbral progressions—are structured into music. This article explores timbral progressions in Webern’s music and some of the types of timbre-based musical logic that organize them. Timbre and pitch are simultaneous, codependent, and symbiotic. With the notion of timbre as the totality of musical tone, this article examines how timbral-registral space is employed to compose timbral trajectories like expansions, contractions, and crossing lines. In addition to drawing out timbral lines, the analyses focus on how timbre helps delineate pitch constructs, timbre’s role in structuring gesture and theme, and various types of timbral symmetry. Rather than a shift away from pitch analysis, this article proposes a repositioning toward the inclusion of timbre in analytic discourses.
