[null, {"document_url": "https://www.matthewjroy.com/about", "unformatted_src": "https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5970344fb8a79b1e06807e30/t/5970359a893fc0cc290fed9e/1500526056239/IMG_8572.jpg", "src": "https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5970344fb8a79b1e06807e30/t/5970359a893fc0cc290fed9e/1500526056239/IMG_8572.jpg", "formatted_filename": "IMG", "alt_text": "IMG_8572.jpg"}, null]
Meet Matthew

Matthew Roy is a musicologist studying and working as a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his M.A. in Music from Eastern Washington University, Spokane, his B.A. in Piano Performance magna cum laude from Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California and is a member of the national music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda.

His primary research focus at this time is music and childhood. His dissertation, The Musicalization of Romantic Childhood: Genre, Power, Paradox (expected completion 2018), explores the musical reification of children in the nineteenth-century through various instrumental genres, pedagogical perspectives, and social ideologies; in so doing, he draws together the disciplines of musicology and children's studies in ways that have not been pursued before. He is passionate about using this research to engage in large discussions of music's role in the history and sociology of childhood and a paper given at the 2016 meeting of the Folklore Group of the University of California in Santa Barbara, he presented a paper entitled "Spinning Tales: The Märchenfrau in Nineteenth-Century Music" to an interdisciplinary audience shows him pursuing this aim.

Additionally Matthew studies the topic of preludes, preluding, and improvisation. His Masters Thesis, The Genesis of the Soviet Prelude Set for Piano: Shostakovich, Zaderatsky, Zhelobinsky, and Goltz (2012), breaks new ground in English-language research by exploring marginalized and little-known Soviet composers and this research has been cited in various articles and program liners worldwide. He has presented on this topic in conferences—"Dehumanization in the Prelude Set of Vsevolod Dmitrievich Zaderatsky" for the 2012 meeting of the American Musicological Society Pacific Northwest Chapter—and in printHe has been published both in print—the article “Preludes for Every Occasion” in Clavier Companion (Sept. 2014).

Teaching plays an important part in Matthew's work, both in scholastic settings and to public audiences. He has taught and developed courses on music history, world music, music theory, musicianship, and private/class piano at multiple institutions, has devoted considerable energy toward pedagogical research and training, and has been nominated for UCSB’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award on several occasions. He is also delivered preconcert talks as well as topical lectures and lecture-recitals.

In addition to these scholarly endeavors, he is also a performer on piano, organ, guitar, hurdy-gurdy, and various folk wind instruments; choral director; composer; arranger; private teacher; language learner; dessert eater; father; and husband.