Born in London, Matthew Brown studied at the Royal College of Music Preparatory Division and later at King's College London. He pursued a Ph.D. in musicology at Cornell University. From 1983-1986 he was a junior fellow at Harvard University. Since then, he has taught musicology at the Eastman School
of Music and theory at Louisiana State University. He has served on the council of the American Musicological Society and the executive board of the Society for Music Theory. He is currently Associate Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music.