The Revd Dr Matthew Cheung Salisbury FRHistS

Matthew’s academic formation has spanned music, history, theology, and canon law. A former student at Worcester, he was first appointed College Lecturer in 2010. Over the years he has served as Chairman of the Faculty of Music, as intercollegiate organ scholarships coordinator, as consultant senior researcher in the Faculty of Letters in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and as adviser to cathedrals, churches, and television and radio producers on musical and liturgical matters. His research has been profiled on BBC Radio and TV.

Matthew is also Assistant Curate at St Barnabas, Jericho (the College’s parish church) and National Liturgical Adviser to the Church of England.

Matthew teaches the historical and philosophical side of the BA course in Music, and has also convened option papers at undergraduate and postgraduate level on the theology of sacred music and on Western plainchant. Matthew has supervised postgraduate and undergraduate research for the faculties of Music and Theology on a wide range of topics connected with sacred music and/or the worship of the Church, and welcomes enquiries for supervision and collaboration.

With a background in editorial and analytical work with the manuscripts and printed books of the Western liturgical tradition, Matthew has published widely on the transmission and regulation of the liturgy and its music in medieval England, especially the liturgical Uses of Sarum and York. He is also interested in the theology of music in present-day Christian worship, and in the intersections of medieval and modern liturgical praxis with literary and critical theory: he has worked on specific issues related to participation, technology, and the liturgical theology of Joseph Ratzinger. Matthew is also interested in the intersections of medieval and modern liturgical praxis with literary and critical theory. Matthew’s research has always been informed by practice, and he continues occasionally to direct recordings, performances, and services which include newly edited music and liturgical text. He has published several books (including The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England, 2015; most recently editing God in Fragments: worshipping with those living with dementia, 2020) and numerous articles and book chapters on medieval and contemporary liturgy and sacred music. He has led several research projects and contributed to others, in areas ranging from medieval convent drama to Covid-19.

Principal publications include:

• God in Fragments: Worshipping with those Living with Dementia (London: Church House Publishing, 2020).
• Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the Use of Salisbury, (co-edited with John and Sally Harper)  Early English Church Music 59-60 (London: Stainer and Bell for the British Academy, 2019).
• Worship in Medieval England (Amsterdam: ARC Humanities Press / Amsterdam University Press, 2018).
• Medieval Latin Liturgy in English Translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017).
• The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015).
• Hear My Voice, O God: Functional Dimensions of Christian Worship (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2014).
• Cataloguing Discrepancies: The Printed York Breviary of 1493 (with Andrew Hughes and Heather Robbins) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).