Rate My Professor Matthew Butterfield

Matthew Butterfield serves as Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Franklin & Marshall College. A trained jazz pianist, he holds a B.A. in music, cum laude, from Amherst College (1991) and a Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Pennsylvania (2000), where his dissertation was titled “Jazz Analysis and the Production of Musical Community: A Situational Perspective,” advised by Christopher F. Hasty. Before joining Franklin & Marshall, Butterfield taught music theory and history courses at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Eastern Illinois University, and the University of Virginia. He also held a postdoctoral fellowship in music theory at the University of Chicago. His academic career reflects a deep engagement with jazz scholarship and performance.

Butterfield specializes in American music, particularly jazz and blues. His current research investigates the rhythmic phenomenon of “swing” from interdisciplinary perspectives, including music theory, perception, critical race theory, and ethnographic social theory. Planned projects include a book on jazz rhythm and another exploring jazz and rock appropriations of the blues, emphasizing the role of race in American popular music and culture. His scholarship appears in prominent journals such as Music Theory Spectrum, Jazz Perspectives, Music Theory Online, and Music Perception. Key publications include “Why Do Jazz Musicians Swing Their Eighth Notes?” (Music Theory Spectrum, 2011), “Race and Rhythm: The Social Component of the Swing Groove” (Jazz Perspectives, 2010), “Variant Timekeeping Patterns and Their Effects in Jazz Drumming” (Music Theory Online, 2010), “Participatory Discrepancies and the Perception of Beats in Jazz” (Music Perception, 2010), “The Power of Anacrusis: Engendered Feeling in Groove-Based Musics” (Music Theory Online, 2006), and “When Swing Doesn’t Swing: Competing Conceptions of an Early Twentieth-Century Rhythmic Quality” (Harvard University Press, 2016). He has presented papers at conferences including the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, and Society for Music Perception and Cognition. At Franklin & Marshall, he teaches courses like MUS 200: Theory 1: Tools and Concepts, MUS 270: Pop Music Theory & Performance, MUS 279: Theory 2: Harmony, Writing, Form, and MUS 301: Pops and Jelly Roll. From 2018 to 2022, he served as don of Roschel College House and launched F&M Idol, an annual singing competition for first-year and sophomore students. Butterfield has conducted research sabbaticals in New Orleans in 2011 and 2016.