Stanford Sir C
Stanford, Sir Charles Villiers
DATE OF BIRTH: 30 September 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH: Dublin
DATE OF DEATH: 29 March 1924
PLACE OF DEATH: London
DISCIPLINE (broad classification; e.g., natural science, fine arts, military, etc.): Fine Arts
FIELD (detail; e.g., poetry, opera, general, etc.): Music Composition and Performance
ASSESSMENT: Stanford was a leading participant of the late-19thcentury renaissance of British music. Though the popularity of his own work waned after his death, it is currently enjoying significant reconsideration, and his influence upon early 20thCentury music is evidenced by the music and legacy of his many protégés.
LANGUAGE/S: English
EDUCATION: Trinity College, Dublin; Queen’s College, Cambridge
ACHIEVEMENTS: Prolific in many classical music forms. His sacred music is considered foundational to the Anglican religious tradition. Contributed greatly to the advancement of music education in Britain.
MAJOR-WORKS: The Traveling Companion,Shamus O’Brien, Irish Rhapsodies (Nos. 1 – 6), Revenge
PARENTS: John James Stanford, Mary Henn
SPOUSE: Jennie Wetton (1856-1941)
SIBLINGS: none
CHILDREN: Geraldine Mary Stanford (1883-1956), Guy Desmond Stanford (1885-1953)
LIFE AND TIMES/DETAILS:
Born into a middle-class Anglo-Irish family, Stanford’s childhood years were that of a privileged prodigy. His father, an influential Dublin lawyer, encouraged his musical pursuits, and by age six Stanford had produced his first attempts at musical composition. By eight he achieved proficiency with both the piano and the violin, and at ten he gave his first recital.
In 1864, Stanford’s original composition, “We Bear Her Home: A Venetian Dirge” was given at a public concert in Dublin. The performance drew accolades in the music publication Orchestra, which served to spread Stanford’s reputation as an emerging musical talent. That same year, Torrance’s Church Hymnal was published, containing a hymn penned by the young Stanford—his first composition to see print.
Following this auspicious beginning, Stanford entered Cambridge University’s Queen’s College in 1870 to study music. Soon thereafter, he made his debut as pianist for the Cambridge University Musical Society. In three short years he was promoted to assistant conductor and, finally, conductor of the Society—a post he retained until 1892.
His status as a student at Queen’s College ended in 1873, however, when he migrated to Dublin’s Trinity College. Upon receiving his degree, Stanford was allowed leave time from his position as college organist to pursue continued musical education abroad.
Between 1874 and 1877, he spent three extended periods in Germany. During the first two, Stanford studied privately with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig. Although Leipzig was a major musical and educational center, and thus beneficial to his development, Stanford ultimately found Reinecke lacking as a teacher due to his obstinacy and doctrinaire teachings. On his last trip to Germany as a pupil Stanford studied with Friedrich Kiel in Berlin. Kiel was more open to modern developments in music, and thus was found more agreeable a tutor by Stanford. During this period, Stanford composed his First Symphony in B-flat, which wascompleted in 1876, and premiered in London in 1879.
In the spring of 1880, Stanford staged his first opera, The Veiled Prophet, to mixed reviews. The work, based on a narrative by Irish poet Thomas Moore, displays an affinity for Irish themes that would crop up in much of Stanford’s work. This taste first produced commercial success with the 1881 publication of Songs of Old Ireland, a collection of Stanford’s Irish folk song arrangements.
The 1880s and 1890s found Stanford at the apex of his career. In 1883, he received an honorary conductor at the Royal College of Music in London. At RCM Stanford was a colleague of Parry*, with whom he would have a long, productive, yet ultimately strained relationship (Stanford’s dealings with fellow composer Elgar* were similarly fraught).
In 1887, Stanford was named professor of music at Cambridge—a post he often administered to in absentia—and saw the premiere of his most famous symphony, the Third Symphony in F Minor, or “Irish Symphony.” In 1888, he received a second honorary doctoral degree, this time from Cambridge. By 1892, he stepped down as organist at Trinity and moved from Dublin to London full time.
That same year Stanford began his musical adaptation of Tennyson*’s Beckett. The piece, which premiered in 1893, was one in a long line of Tennyson-inspired works. Stanford’s first important commission came during his Leipzig period, when the poet asked him to contribute incidental music for his play Queen Mary. Though marred by conflicts with the Lyceum Theatre’s staff and the poor showing of the play itself, the experience opened the way for a host of future collaborations, including Carmen saeculare, produced specially for Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887.
Stanford’s biggest success in adapting Tennyson came with Revenge, the hit of the Leeds Festival in 1886. Revenge combined a patriotic theme—commemoration of British Naval heroism—with melodies easily adaptable to amateur choral groups, and njoyed widespread popularity.
Stanford’s success continued with the staging of Shamus O’Brien in 1896. The opera—the most successful of his career—drew again upon an Irish theme, this time a long-poem written in mock-Irish dialect. Stanford also conducted the Leeds Philharmonic Society and the Leeds Triennial Festival Orchestra during the late 1890s.
His knighthood, conferred in 1902, marked the first such honor given solely on musical merit in twenty years. In 1904, Stanford was elected member of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin, and in 1906, he conducted the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra in Paris.
World War I had a dramatic impact on Stanford’s life. His only opportunity to visit the United States—as visiting composer at the Norfolk Music Festival—was thwarted by the sinking of the Lusitania. Stanford and his wife had passage booked on the vessel for just eight days after the attack.
The War strained his relationships with German contemporaries and caused him great financial and emotional hardship. In 1916, amidst these realities, Stanford’s final—and musically strongest—opera was completed. The Traveling Companion, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen* and greatly influenced by Wagner*, reflected the sadness of the time at the same time that it provided escape from the cold realities of wartime England.
Similarly, Stanford’s post-war musical output largely portrayed a reflective and elegiac side of the composer. The best example of these works is At the Abbey Gate, which is void of the brash, bombastic sentiment of some of his earlier works, like Revenge.
Stanford continued to work well into old age and left a formidable body of work. His compositions, covering nearly every musical form, include seven symphonies, ten operas, fifteen concert works, multitudinous chamber, piano, and organ pieces, and over thirty large-scale choral works. His last work—the sixth and final installment of his popular Irish Rhapsodyseries—premiered on September 17, 1922.
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1924, he suffered a major stroke and died of heart failure. His ashes are buried at Westminster Abbey.
As the 20th Century progressed, Stanford’s works—rooted in the Victorian Romantic tradition—lost relevance and ultimately fell from popular and academic grace. However, he has begun to be rediscovered, as evidenced by the simultaneous publication in 2002 of two major Stanford studies. Stanford’s influence as a teacher, however, has never been in question.
During his tenure at Cambridge he initiated many academic reforms and directly influenced a great many pupils who ultimately shaped 20th Century British music. Among his students were Vaughan Williams*, Sir Arthur Bliss, and < taught and influenced> Holst*.
OTHER CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, Victorian composer
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Charles Villiers Stanford. BBC Music. Retrieved January 14, 2004 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/music/muze/index.pl?site=music&action=biography&artist_id=50240
Charles Villiers Stanford. Stainer & Bell Ltd. Retrieved January 14, 2004 from http://www.stainer.co.uk/stanford.html
Charles Villiers Stanford 1852-1924. The Musical Times. Retrieved January 14, 2004 from http://www.musicaltimes.co.uk/archive/obits/192405stanford.html
Dibble, Jeremy., Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Rodmell, Paul, Charles Villiers Stanford (Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain). London: Ashgate, 2002.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Classical Net. Retrieved January 14, 2004 from http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/acc/stanford.html
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). Karadar Classical Music. Retrieved January 14, 2004 from http://www.karadar.net/Dictionary/stanford.html
Stanford, Sir Charles Villiers. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved January 12, 2004, from http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=71202