Biography
I am a Title A Fellow (elsewhere known as a 'JRF') at Trinity College, Cambridge. I research and teach in the theory and analysis of most music ranging from J.S. Bach to contemporary film. Particular interests concern harmony in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially among so-called 'transitional' composers (Scriabin, Schoenberg, etc.), and often addressed through the lens of pitch-class set and pitch-collectional theories. I completed all my degrees at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.
Publications
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).
2025: ‘Scriabin’s Lisztian-Stravinskian Sonata Forms’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 150 (1) {forthcoming}.
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}.
Webern's Lost Cello Sonata and Music in the Aphoristic Style
[book manuscript complete January 2025]
Articles and Books in preparation:
‘Diatonic and Modal Collections in Scriabin, and their Musico-Philosophical Consequences'
'The Individualisation of Harmony and its Ramifications for Gendered Theories of Musical Structure'
'Recomposing with Stravinsky in a Galaxy Far, Far Away'
'Stravinsky's (Scriabinist?) Sonata Forms'
The Art of Recomposition in Film, Concert, and Popular Musics [book project]
Scriabin's Late Music and the Gendered Intensification of Fin-de-siècle Harmony [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 ten Part II analysis portfolios to completion since 2020. I have also taught music history in Cambridge, and the complete Tonal Skills pathway in 'Harmony' at Gonville & Caius, working with students in orchestration and style composition projects from 1800 to the present day. Projects supervised across analysis and tonal skills papers range widely, including: 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, 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.
