School of Music

Adjunct Assistant Professor

B.A., Iowa State University; M.A., University of Iowa; Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Professor Matson teaches upper-level courses in music history from the eighteenth century to the present. His teaching experience includes courses in graduate research methods, music history, non-Western music, American music, music appreciation, pop music history, bluegrass performance, and the Florentine Renaissance. He has held faculty positions at Illinois Wesleyan University, Illinois State University, and Millikin University, where he was a long-time member of the Millikin Big Bluegrass Band, and the founder and co-director of Walking in Florence, an interdisciplinary study abroad program.

As a scholar of music from the nineteenth century to the present, Matson’s research explores musical borrowing at the turn of the twenty-first century, and the performance practice of nineteenth-century German songs (lieder). Matson’s doctoral dissertation investigates several facets of musical borrowing, showing how artists such as Paul Simon, Rivers Cuomo, and Chris Thile incorporate musical allusions and quotations into their works. His master’s thesis discusses various approaches to the performance of Schubert’s lieder.

Matson’s publications appear in Music References Services Quarterly, Notes, American Music Research Center Journal, Grove Dictionary of American Musicians, and other places. He has copyedited eight monographs published by Oxford University Press and more than 1,750 encyclopedia articles published by Oxford Music Online.