Biography
I am a Title A Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. I research and teach in the theory and analysis of most music ranging from the Classical Style to contemporary film. Of particular interest are the many harmonic languages spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially among so-called 'transitional' composers (Scriabin, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Debussy etc.); I often address these issues through the lens of set-theoretical and pitch-collectional theories. I completed all my degrees at Gonville & Caius College.
Currently, I am writing two books: a long history of 'recomposition' told through analytical close-readings of music from Liszt to Jacob Collier, and a micro-account of interconnected early-modernist composition by Scriabin, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, couched in what I regard the anni mirabiles 1907–1915.
Publications
Weberns Lost Cello Sonata and Music in the Aphoristic Style (Routledge, c.2026) {forthcoming}.
Scriabin's Late Works and the 'Holy Grail' of Music Theory and Analysis {under review}.
2024: 'Harmonic "Quality" and Set-Class Structure: Schoenberg's Opus 19 No. 2 Reconsidered', Music Theory Online, 30 (1).
2024: 'Alban Berg's Op. 5/2 and the Concept of Recomposition', Music Analysis, 43 (3), pp. 380–421.
2025: ‘Scriabin’s Lisztian-Stravinskian Sonata Forms’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 150 (1), pp. 145–185.
2025: 'Gendered Harmony and Unsung Collections', Music Analysis {forthcoming, critical forum essay}.
2025: 'Music as “Diegesis-Determinant”, Disability and the Representation of Madness in The "Bathroom Dance" Scene, from Joker (2019)’, in Laurel Parsons & Brenda Ravenscroft (eds.), Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers, Vol. 4 (New York: Oxford University Press) {forthcoming}.
Articles and Books in preparation/under review:
'Advanced Thoughts on One of Stravinsky's Russian Traditions' {Parts I–II, under review}.
'Some Absolute Music Theory and Analysis' {under review}.
'Thoughts on Some Lost Thoughts of Adele T. Katz'.
'The "Individualisation of Harmony", Harmonic Continua, and Their Ramifications for Gendered Theories of Musical Structure'.
'Recomposing with Stravinsky in a Galaxy Far, Far Away'.
'Jacob Collier's Practices of Transcription'.
Essays in the Art of Recomposition from Franz Liszt to Jacob Collier [book project].
Scriabin, Schoenberg, Stravinsky: 1907–1915 [book project].
Public Writings:
2022: 'Rajan Lal Reflects on 150 Years of Alexander Scriabin and the Analytical Task of "Remystifying"', University of Cambridge, Faculty of Music Research Blog:
https://musicatcambridge.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/rajan-lal-reflects-on-....
2024: 'Rajan Lal Reflects on Scriabin, Symmetry, and the Second Viennese School', University of Cambridge, Faculty of Music Research Blog:
https://musicatcambridge.wordpress.com/2024/10/29/scriabin-symmetry-and-...
Teaching and Supervisions
I have taught Music Analysis at Part IA, Part IB, and Part II for numerous Cambridge colleges, principally: Gonville & Caius, Trinity, and Clare. I have supervised around thirty Part II analysis portfolios to completion since 2020. I have also taught both music history, tonal skills, extended essay, and dissertations papers widely in Cambridge.
Projects supervised across the breadth of the Tripos include: performance analysis of J.S. Bach, structural depth in Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd', 'octatonic serialism' in Dallapiccola, voice-leading reduction for Jazz, Stravinsky's transition to serialism, a range of nineteenth and twentieth-century topics on structure and form, leitmotivic appraisals of both early and contemporary film music – and more. I presently lecture in Analysis at Part IB.
Other Professional Activities
I was co-convenor for the Cambridge Faculty of Music Colloquium Series, 2023–24. From 2020–2024, I was head of Oxbridge Admissions at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, Rochester. I was recently elected a trustee of the Society for Music Analysis, and am presently co-convenor of the SMA Colloquium Series. My research has featured at national and international musicology conferences.
