Bio
Matthew Zeller is Curator for Europe at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona. He is an organologist, musicologist, and violin bow maker. Prior to joining MIM, Matt was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ACTOR Project at McGill University, Schulich School of Music. He has three main areas of research: the history, design, and development of the violin family and its place in musical-material culture; the intersections of subculture studies, framing theory, and social movements located in the study of ska, punk, and reggae music; and the functional and expressive roles of timbre in both popular and art music. Matt’s current projects include investigations of the expressive and formal capacities of timbre in popular music, articles and chapters on specific musical instruments, and a book on violin design from Andrea Amati to Antonio Stradivari.
A leading expert on Klangfarbenmelodie, Matt has published articles in Music Theory Online on Arnold Schoenberg’s “Farben” and Anton Webern’s atonal works that formulate analytical techniques and language specific to timbre. His dissertation, “Planal Analysis and the Emancipation of Timbre: Klangfarbenmelodie and Timbral Function in Mahler, Schoenberg, and Webern,” focuses on timbre’s functional roles in musical logic in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century music. His most recent work on timbre and texture in the music of Wagner and Mahler will be published in 2026 in the Oxford Handbook of Orchestration Studies.
Matt’s work on musical instruments has been published in De musica disserenda and The Strad, and featured by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd Street Y, Google Cultural Institute, and National Music Museum. Matt has worked extensively with the instruments of Andrea Amati and the Amati family, the founding fathers of the Cremonese school of violin making. He has developed new theories and techniques for evaluating instrument design and condition issues, as well as helping to pioneer new ultraviolet fluorescence research techniques and their applications to musical instruments. He has also worked broadly with X-ray and CT scan technologies in organological research. Matt co-founded the Organology Study Group within the American Musicological Society. He is the President of the Musical Instrument Research Catalogue (MIRCat) and a member of the Board of Governors of the American Musical Instrument Society.
Matt taught music theory at McGill University and music history—including the history of musical instruments—at Duke University.
Matt holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Duke University, as well as an M.Mus. specializing in musical instrument history from the University of South Dakota, where he worked at the National Music Museum. He studied music composition at North Carolina School of the Arts, film and media production at the University of Utah, and museum studies at Northwestern University.
Matt trained in bow making under Jean Grunberger at the Bow Making School of America and has studied violin and bow restoration in various professional settings including the VSA/Oberlin workshops, where he has been a participant in both the making and restoration sections. Prior to his bowed string instrument training, Matt studied brass and woodwind restoration and was a member of the National Association of Professional Band Instrument Repair Technicians.
