James Chater is a British composer and musicologist born in Henley-on-Thames in 1951. He studied music at the University of Oxford, taking the BA in 1973 and the D.Phil. in 1980. His thesis, Luca Marenzio and the Italian Madrigal, 1577-1593, was published as a book (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press) in 1981. He is the author of many articles on secular music in Italy in the late 16th century; these have appeared in Early Music, the Journal of American Musicology, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, The Musical Times, Notes, the Rivista italiana di musicologia, Il saggiatore musicale, Studi musicali and other periodicals and Festschrifts. In his writings several previously anonymous madrigal texts are identified, and the intimate ties between poets, musicians and patrons are explored. Chater was a Fellow of the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Archived 2 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine (Villa I Tatti, Florence) from 1981–82.
From 1982 to 1986 James Chater taught history of music at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth), Washington University in St. Louis (USA), the University of Victoria (BC, Canada) and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). From 1986 to 1997 he was English-language Editor of classical music CD booklets for Philips Classics Records (Baarn, The Netherlands), and has been pursuing a career in publishing ever since then.