Oliver Chandler is director of studies in music at Keble and Hertford Colleges, University of Oxford and an academic professor at the Royal College of Music.

He is the co-author, with J. P. E. Harper-Scott, of Return to Riemann: Tonal Function and Chromatic Music (Routledge 2024), the co-editor, with Thomas Hyde, of Born by the Thames: Stephen Dodgson, a Centenary Celebration (de la Porte, 2024) and the author of A Twelve-Tone Repertory for Guitar: Julian Bream and the British Serialists, 1956–1983 (GFA Monographs, 2023). Research on the classical guitar repertoire and Elgar’s chamber music, among other topics, has appeared in journals such as Music & Letters, Music Analysis, Music Theory and Analysis and Music Theory Online. He sits on the editorial board of Soundboard Scholar and he is a member of the Cambridge Cohort for Guitar Research. A keen guitarist himself, he was awarded the guitar-departmental prize by Trinity Laban in 2015.

 

Teaching

 

Oliver teaches second- and third-year analysis, but he also runs tutorials on pop transcription and arrangement and World Jazz. He is keen to empower students to understand music, personally treasured or yet to be encountered, in diverse and rewarding ways.

 

Publications

 

Books

Journal Articles

  • ‘Phasic Dissonance, Timbral Contrast: Analyzing Twentieth-Century Guitar Harmonies with Discrete Fourier Transform’, with Isabella Thorneycroft, Music Analysis43/1 (in press, due March 2024).
  • ‘Reginald Smith Brindle’s Concept of Tonal-Atonal Equilibriumin Theory and Practice’, Soundboard Scholar 7 (2021): 1-24
  • ‘Tonal Dodecaphony and Sentential Form: Extracts from Humphrey Searle’s Symphony No. 2, Op. 33’, Music Theory & Analysis 8/2 (2021): 43-53
  • ‘Structural Dissonance Reimagined: the Finale of Elgar’s Violin Sonata, Op. 82’, Music & Letters 102/2 (2021): 294-316
  • ‘“Octatonic” voice leading and diatonic function in the Allegro molto from Elgar’s String Quartet in E minor, op. 83’, Music Theory Online26/1 (2020), 8,500 words                     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-Atlantic9/1 (2020): 1-29

Book Chapters

  • ‘Chapter 17: Eclectic Unities? Malcolm Arnold’s “Symphonic Thinking”’, The Symphony in Britain and Ireland Since 1900, ed. Nicholas Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 5,500 words [commissioned; submitted third round of edits to the editor])
  • ‘Stephen Dodgson’s Neo-Classical Language’, The Music of Stephen Dodgson (de la Porte publishing, in press, 7,000 words)
  • ‘Chapter 3: Tonality in Waltraute’s Plaint’ (co-authored with J. P. E. Harper-Scott) in Wagner Studies, ed. Steven Vande Moortele (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [commissioned; in press; anticipated publication Winter 2023, 7,500 words])
  • ‘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 [commissioned; in press; anticipated publication June 2024: 7,500 words])

Reviews

  • Musics with and after Tonality: Mining the Gap Paul Fleet (review), Music & Letters 104/1 (2023), 147-50