Oliver Chandler is an academic professor at the Royal College of Music and senior college lecturer in music at Keble College, University of Oxford. He is also a musicianship and guitar teacher at the Royal College of Music Junior Department. His first monograph, A Twelve-Tone Repertory for Guitar: Julian Bream and the British Serialists, 1956-1983, was published in June 2023. With Professor Emeritus J. P. E. Harper-Scott, he is also the co-author of Return to Riemann: Tonal Function and Chromatic Music (RMA Monograph Series, in press), which explores the limits of harmonic-functional analysis in the music of Richard Wagner. Also interested in a broad range of British music, he began his academic career with a Ph.D. on Edward Elgar’s late chamber music before going on to write about composers such as Humphrey Searle, Malcolm Arnold, and Stephen Dodgson. Much of this work has been published in academic journals, including Music & Letters, Music Theory Online, and Music Theory & Analysis. Committed to the survival of music analysis in British Higher Education, he is a trustee of the Society for Music Analysis. He also sits on the editorial board of Soundboard Scholar.
Books
A Twelve-Tone Repertory for Guitar: Julian Bream and the British Serialists, 1956-1983 (Guitar Foundation of America Refereed Monograph Series Volume 4, 2023): https://digitalcommons.du.edu/gfamonographs/vol4/iss1/
(with J. P. E. Harper-Scott) Return to Riemann: Tonal Function and Chromatic Music (RMA Monograph Series, in press: coming late 2023).
Articles
‘Reginald Smith Brindle’s Concept of Tonal-Atonal Equilibrium in Theory and Practice’, Soundboard Scholar 7 (in press, December 2021).
‘Tonal Dodecaphony and Sentential Form: Extracts from Humphrey Searle’s Symphony No. 2, Op. 33’, Music Theory & Analysis 8/2 (in press, October 2021).
‘Structural Dissonance Reimagined: the Finale of Elgar’s Violin Sonata, Op. 82’, Music & Letters 102/2 (in press). (An advanced copy of the article is available here.)
‘“Octatonic” voice leading and diatonic function in the Allegro molto from Elgar’s String Quartet in E minor, op. 83’, Music Theory Online 26/1 (2020) https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.1/mto.20.26.1.chandler.html
‘Diatonic Illusions and Chromatic Waterwheels: Edward Elgar’s Concept of Tonality’, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 15/1 (2020): 3-29
‘A Diminished-Seventh Bassbrechung: Tonal Ambiguity and the Prolongation of Function in Edward Elgar’s String Quartet, 1st movement’, GAMUT: Online Journal of the Music-Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic 9/1 (2020): 1-29
Book Chapters
‘Tonality and (the) “Beyond”: Elgar’s Gerontius and Piacevole’ in Art, Music, and Mysticism in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Michelle Foot and Corrinne Chong (Routledge, under contract for August 2022: 7,500 words).
Discrete Fourier Transform, PC Set Theory, Schenkerian Analysis, Riemannian Theory, British Music, Guitar Studies
