Dr Oliver Chandler

Oliver is a music theorist with interests in late-romantic and post-tonal repertories, particularly the music of Edward Elgar and Humphrey Searle.

Email: [email protected]

Background

Oliver began working at Anglia Ruskin University in September 2019, after the completion of his Ph.D. at Royal Holloway, University of London. He both writes and delivers first and second year courses, in theory, analysis, history, and musicology; he also tutors at the University of Oxford (Oriel, Somerville, Christ Church, and Lady Margaret Hall Colleges) and King’s College London.

He has had articles published in leading music theory journals and he has a book chapter forthcoming in the edited collection 'Art, Music, and Mysticism in the Long Nineteenth Century’, eds. Corrinne Chong and Michelle Foot (Bloomsbury Press). He was awarded the graduate student essay prize by the Society for Music Analysis in 2017 for his Schenkerian reading of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro op. 47. He has recently been invited to present a lecture on his own research as part of the Oxford University Music Faculty's Research Colloquium series.

Oliver is also a keen guitarist. He was awarded the guitar-departmental performance prize during his master's studies at Trinity Laban, Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and the Alice Dougherty Prize for the best final year recital at Royal Holloway.

Research interests

• Schenkerian Analysis
• Neo-Riemannian Theory
• Post-Tonal Theory
• The music of Edward Elgar

Areas of research supervision

• Schenkerian Analysis, Post-Tonal Analysis
• The use of form in the piano sonatas of Nikolai Kapustin (Ph.D thesis)

Teaching

• Foundations of Music Theory
• Introduction to Music Studies
• Techniques in Music Analysis
• Readings in Music History

Qualifications

• Ph.D. (Musicology), Royal Holloway, University of London
• MMus (Performance), Trinity Laban, Conservatoire of Music and Dance
• BMus, Royal Holloway, University of London

Memberships, editorial boards

• Society for Music Theory
• Society for Music Analysis

Selected recent publications

Chandler, Oliver, 2020. '"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

Chandler, Oliver, 2020. 'Diatonic Illusions and Chromatic Waterwheels: Edward Elgar's Concept of Tonality'. Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 15/1: 3-29.

Chandler, Oliver, 2020. '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: 1-29.

Recent presentations and conferences

'The Prolongation of Function in Edward Elgar's String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83', BrumMAC, Birmingham University, July 2020.

'Reconstructing an Elgarian Formenlehre', International Conference on Musical Form, Newcastle, June/July 2020.

'Elgar's Late Chamber Music and Nineteenth-Century Tonality', Nineteenth-Century Music Conference, Huddersfield, July 2018.

'Hauntology as analytical metaphor: the Piacevole from Elgar's String Quartet', SurreyMAC, Surrey, September 2017.

'Edward Elgar's Introduction and Allegro: utopia as analytical metaphor', Ninth European Music Analysis Conference, Strasbourg, June to July 2017.