The violinist’s skill with an eccentric composer’s work earned him a coveted spot in a European masterclass
Matthew Seliger, A27, competed against musicians from around the world to study at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Most 4-year-olds beg their parents for toys. Matthew Seliger, A27, pleaded with his mother for a violin. She relented, and Seliger soon began taking lessons at the prestigious Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, eventually performing in elite ensembles around the Baltimore area through his teens.
Seliger chose Tufts partially thanks to the Music Cognition Lab directed by Professor Aniruddh Patel. As a double major in music and biopsychology, Seliger quickly made a mark on campus, studying under Patel, violin instructor Joanna Kurkowicz, and Professor of Music John McDonald.
This year, they supported his application to the prestigious International Masterclasses at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, Austria. His acceptance to the June masterclasses, which drew applicants worldwide, was even more remarkable because he auditioned with Schoenberg’s “Phantasy for Violin with Piano Accompaniment,” one of the composer’s most intensely dramatic pieces. But for Seliger, an aspiring music psychologist, that choice was fitting, as he is fascinated by the powerful effect music has on our emotions.
What sparked your love of music, specifically violin?
My grandfather is a very talented amateur jazz pianist. My parents are huge audiophiles and season ticketholders at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. From a very young age, music was part of my household.
At age four, something clicked. I woke up one morning and said, “I want to play violin.” My mom was like: “You’re four! Are you crazy?” I was persistent. I joke frequently: If it weren’t for her, I’d have an extra half a year of experience, because it took that long, asking every day, before she was like, “OK. This kid is serious.”
Why is Arnold Schoenberg’s music considered so difficult to play, and why was being accepted to these masterclasses so meaningful?
Schoenberg was a very eccentric composer. In Western classical music, our scales use eight tones, but he developed a 12-tone system, where you have to hit every note in the 12 tones before you can repeat a note. There’s no home key; there’s no harmonic expectation; there’s no resolution that we’re so familiar with. He uses a lot of double or triple stops, when you have to play two or three notes at the same time. They don’t naturally fit into the hands. We’re used to playing things like octaves and sixths—the intervals used in regular harmonic music. But Schoenberg loves to use things like tri-tones and ninths, which we don’t really practice. He also uses a technique of not pressing on the string but just holding your finger above it to produce very high-pitch tones. These are things I’d never done before on the violin.
Being selected was incredible. I woke up to it, because they sent the acceptance on Austrian time. I had an 8 a.m. class, so I checked in at 7:45 a.m. I woke up my roommate. I called my mom. I was just over the moon. It still feels surreal.
A double major in music and biopsychology, Seliger is fascinated by the powerful effect music has on our emotions. Photo: Alonso Nichols
What was the experience like?
It was truly amazing. I had a host family in Mödling, a very cute village about 20 minutes from Vienna by train, where the Arnold Schoenberg House is. Beethoven used to live there. Schubert went on walks there.
Vienna is beautiful; the arts and culture are just endless. There’s still incredible interest in classical music. The opera and concert halls sell out every day. For our final recital, we had 80 to 90 people come to a two-hour program of what’s essentially atonal music. That kind of thing will only happen in Vienna.
For me, music is not just an artistic passion project. It’s also a source of intellectual stimulation and intrigue: What is music, what does it mean, what is its purpose? People who are interested in Schoenberg are interested in these questions. Having those intellectual discussions with other musicians was incredibly valuable.
Why is music important for the world?
I’m really interested in music cognition and music psychology. Tufts has the leading music psychology lab, arguably in the country, if not the world. There’s incredible music-cognition research coming out of our university. To paraphrase composer Claude Debussy: “Music doesn’t express an emotion. It is an emotion.” For me, music expresses all the things that I’m not able to say. What draws us to music seems so abstract. I’m interested in unpacking it.
I’d love to give lecture recitals, presenting music cognition research alongside music that demonstrates what the research shows, both for musicians and for regular audiences. I’d like to fuse the incredible mystery of music and cognition, shedding a light on why it has such a powerful effect on us.
