Matthew Werley

Dr. Matthew Werley is a musicologist and cultural historian in Salzburg, Austria. ​​He is the founding Director of the Salzburg Institute for Advanced Studies, a newly established education and research hub that leverages Salzburg's legacy of cultural diplomacy within and beyond the borders of Austria.

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Educated at the University of Oxford, Matthew's research focuses on festival and opera studies (from Gluck to Puccini as well as contemporary productions), cultural diplomacy, modern dance, Austrian literature, as well as the politics of music in interwar/postwar Austria and Germany.

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With about 50 publications in German, English and in translation (Dutch and French), Matthew has investigated a wide variety of interdisciplinary subjects such as the history of the Salzburg Festival, Gustav Mahler, Stefan Zweig, Richard Wagner, Grete Wiesenthal, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky and the history of musical form.

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As a public-facing researcher, Matthew has spoken at the Vienna State Opera, Glyndebourne Opera, the Salzburg Festival, Musiktage Mondsee (Austria) and Academy Travel (Sydney), as well as delivered radio talks for the Canadian Broadcasting Co, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ORF Salzburg and ORF Ö1 (the latter a live format reaching a quarter of a million listeners). He has also published in the Salzburger Nachrichten, and written programme notes for Bayerische Staatsoper, La Monnaie, Staatstheater Nürnberger, and Wiener Philharmoniker, for whom he writes regularly. He has also curated several ground-breaking local and international exhibitions receiving more than 20,000 visitors.

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Having first gained valuable experience as an orchestral percussionist, which included invitations to perform abroad by such figures as King Hussein of Jordan and Naina Yeltsina/Hilary Clinton, Matthew has taught extensively at universities in the USA, UK (Cambridge) and Austria since the late 1990s, most recently holding the post of a Senior Lecturer in musicology in Salzburg. 

Matthew regularly serves as an international referee for peer-reviewed journals, grant-funding bodies and university-degree assessments. ​Since 2017, he has served as both the co-editor of the peer-reviewed Richard Strauss-Jahrbuch and General Secretary of the Internationale Richard Strauss-Gesellschaft.​ In 2023, the Salzburg Festival appointed him to the Academic Advisory Board of its newly reconstituted Archive.