Biography

After completing his PhD on the early music of Britten under the supervision of Peter Evans at the University of Southampton, Christopher Mark taught at the University of Melbourne and the Australian Catholic University before his appointment at Surrey in 1995. He was editor-in-chief of the journal twentieth-century music (Cambridge University Press), which he co-founded with Allan Moore, from 2004-09, and was founder of the Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music (now renamed Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900), which held its inaugural meeting  at Surrey in 1999.

Research Interests

Theory and analysis; twentieth-century English music, including Britten, Tippett, Vaughan Williams, and Elgar; Roger Smalley; melancholy in music.

Publications

Books

Early Benjamin Britten: A Study of Stylistic and Technical Evolution (New York: Garland, 1995).
Roger Smalley: A Case-Study of Late-20th-Century Composition (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
Britten: An Extraordinary Life (London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, forthcoming).

Chapters in Books
‘Rigorous Contemplation of Essentials: Material and Structure in the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra’ in Poles Apart: The Music of Roger Smalley (Perth: Evos and CIRCME, 1994), pp. 45–58.
‘Tippett, Sequence and Metaphor’ in David Clarke, ed., Tippett Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 95– 116.
‘Juvenilia: 1923–33’ in Mervyn Cooke, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 11–35.
‘Later orchestral music (1910–1934)’, in Daniel Grimley and Julian Rushton, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Elgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.154–70
‘Taking the plunge: opera in England’ in Mervyn Cooke, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 209–221.
‘Constructing tonality: Smalley as (post-)modernist’ in Graham Hair, ed., Modernism in Australian Music, 1950-2000: Eight Case Studies (Canberra: Southern Voices, 2004), pp. 113-31.
‘Elgar and the Idyllic: “By the Wayside” and other perspectives’ in Paul Harper-Scott and Julian Rushton, eds, Elgar Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 78–98.
‘Supported by Tradition: Sonority, Form, and Transcendence in Britten’s String Quartets’ in Evan Jones, ed., Intimate Voices: Aspects of Construction and Character in the Twentieth-Century String Quartet (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2009), pp.41-74.
‘Chamber Music and Concertos’, in Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams (forthcoming, 2010).

Articles

‘Britten’s Quatre Chansons Françaises’, Soundings 10 (Summer 1983), pp. 23–35.
‘Simplicity in Early Britten’, Tempo 147, December 1983, pp .8–14.
‘Contextually Transformed Tonality in Britten’, Music Analysis, 4/3 (October 1985), pp. 265–87.
‘Symmetry and Dynamism in Bartók’, Tempo 183 (December 1992), pp .2–5.
‘Britten and the Circle of Fifths’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association vol. 119 no. 2 (1994), pp. 268–97.
‘“The boughs have withered because I have shown them my dreams”: Warlock’s The Curlew and the harmony of despair’ (in progress)

Bibliography

‘Roger Smalley’s Writings’, in Poles Apart: the Music of Roger Smalley (Perth: Evos and CIRCME, 1994), pp. 119–23.

Reviews

David Clarke, Language, Form and Structure in the Music of Michael Tippett in Music Analysis, 10/1–2, March 1991, pp. 193–207.
Scores by Britten, The Musical Times, March 1991, pp. 133–4.
A recording of piano music by Britten, The Musical Times, August 1992, p. 406.
Zohar Eitan, Highpoints: A Study of Melodic Peaks in Music & Letters, 80/1 (February 1999), pp.123–5.
Mervyn Cooke, Britten and the Far East in Notes, September 2000, pp. 145–8.
Anthony Pople, Messiaen: Quator pour le fin de Temps in Music & Letters, 82/1 (February 2001), pp. 143–5
Michael Oliver, ed., Settling the Score: A Journey through the Music of the 20th Century and Anders Byer, ed., The Voice of Music: Conversations with Composers of Our Time in Music & Letters, 84/1 (February 2003), pp .125–7.
Lionel Pike, Vaughan Williams and the Symphony in Music & Letters, 88/3 (August 2007), pp. 542–5.
Alison Latham, ed. Sing Ariel: Essays and Thoughts for Alexander Goehr’s Seventieth Birthday in Music & Letters (forthcoming).

SEMINARS, CONFERENCE PAPERS, TALKS (selection)

‘Elgar and the structures of melancholy: the Cello Concerto’, Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, Melbourne, April 2001; repeated revised at the University of Reading Elgar Study Day, November 2001 and the University of Surrey Elgar Conference, April 2002.
‘Music and subversion in Albert Herring’, invited contribution to a Glyndebourne Study Day, October 2002.
‘Constructing tonality: Smalley as (post-)modernist’, SMA/RMA Study Day, University of Surrey, March 2004; repeated at the Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, July 2004.
‘Britten and Tippett’, invited post-concert talk at The Sage, Gateshead, February 2005.
‘Tippett and Englishness’, University of Surrey, March 2005.
‘Tippett, The Knot Garden, and the English traditions’, University of Glasgow Tippett Conference, January 2005; repeated revised at the BBC Study Afternoon on The Knot Garden, May 2005.
‘Glimpsing the kingdom? “By the Wayside” from The Apostles and the idyllic’, invited paper delivered to the December 2003 meeting of The Elgar Society (London Branch); repeated revised at University of Birmingham Elgar Conference, June 2005.
‘Tippett and melancholy’, Fourth International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, University of Sussex, August 2005.
‘“The boughs have withered because I have shown them my dreams”: Warlock’s The Curlew and the harmony of despair’, University of Birmingham conference on British Music and Modernism, May 2006.
‘New Music, Progressivism, and Elgar’s Relation to Modernism’, Conference on Elgar and Musical Modernism sponsored by the Institute of Music Research and Gresham’s College, Gresham’s College December 2007 (video archived at http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=718)
‘Back to the Future: Chopin in Smalley’, Third International Congress of the Chopin Institute, Warsaw, February 2010

Teaching

HE2 Musicology A and Musicology B

HE3 English Music from Elgar to Britten

HE3 Dissertation A, B, and C

Supervision of PGR projects on Jonathan Harvey, Britten, and atonal Webern