According to his biographer, Chisholm "was the first composer to absorb Celtic idioms into his music in form as well as content, his achievement paralleling that of Bartók in its depth of understanding and its daring",[1] which led some to give him the nickname "MacBartók".

[3] He left Queen's Park School, Glasgow, at the early age of 13 due to ill health but showed a talent for music composition and some of his pieces were published during his childhood.

In 1927 he travelled to Nova Scotia, Canada, where he was appointed the organist and choirmaster at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, New Glasgow, and director of music at Pictou Academy.

Due to the influence of his future wife, Diana Brodie, he approached several influential music friends for letters of support for an exemption to enter university.

From 1930 he was the musical director of the Glasgow Grand Opera Society[8] which performed in the city's Theatre Royal, conducting the British premières of Mozart's Idomeneo in 1934 and Berlioz's Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict in 1935 and 1936, respectively.

Chisholm had many friends in the music world, including composers like Béla Bartók, Bax, Alan Bush, Delius, Hindemith, Ireland, Medtner, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Szymanowski and Walton, and invited many of them to Glasgow to perform their works under the auspices of the Active Society.

[9] At the outbreak of World War II, Chisholm, a conscientious objector, was declared unfit for military service on the basis of poor eyesight and a crooked arm.

[10] During the war he conducted performances with the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1940, and later joined the Entertainments National Service Association as a colonel touring Italy with the Anglo-Polish Ballet in 1943 and served as musical director to the South East Asia Command between 1943 and 1945.

[13] That year, Chisholm revived the South African College of Music where he eventually would teach composer Stefans Grové and singer Désirée Talbot.

The company also performed Menotti's The Consul as well as Chisholm's own opera The Inland Woman, based on a drama by Irish author Mary Lavin.

During a performance of Stevenson's Passacaglia, the programme made references to Lenin's slogan of peace, bread and land and also in salute of the "emergent Africa".

[19] After 19 years at the South African College of Music, Dr. Chisholm composed an additional twelve operas drawing inspiration from "sources as varied as Hindustan, the Outer Hebrides, the neo-classical and baroque, pibroch, astrology and literature".

In addition, an important collection of manuscripts, letters and other memorabilia left to Chisholm's daughter Morag (including his extensive correspondence with Sorabji) is now housed in the Archive of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.

4–7 by Charles-Valentin Alkan, a composer still largely unknown at that time, the original of which has been said to surpass even the Transcendental Études of Franz Liszt in scale and difficulty.

[27] The "Early Period" is extremely large, beginning with teenage efforts including a Sonatina in G minor, written at 18, and clearly showing something of the influence of John Blackwood McEwen.

3, evidently based on several ricercare motifs originally written by Dalza, fuses Brittenesque harmonies and gentle dissonances in quintessentially pianistic textures.

[27] The music of his "Hindustani" period in the late 1940s and early 1950s reflects Chisholm's wartime travels in the East, his interest in the occult and perhaps his friendship with Sorabji.

These compositions display luscious textures, transcendental technical demands and intensity that are comparable to works by Szymanowski and Sorabji and to some extent an atonality reminiscent of Alban Berg.