Remembering Stanford

2024 marked one hundred years since the death of the composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Above is Leslie Ward‘s caricature of him for Vanity Fair in 1905. I have been singing Stanford’s music since I was a treble in my local parish church choir, so he has been a feature of my life for over forty years. It was with delight, therefore, that I was able to include the following book, as well as the above print, in my recent catalogue on the English Choral Tradition.

‘One of the outstanding figures in the British musical life of his time’ (Oxford DNB), Stanford (1852–1924) was born in Dublin but went to study music at Cambridge, where he was appointed organist of Trinity College.  ‘Stanford’s position as a vigorous and progressive musician of distinction was consolidated in 1883 by his appointment as professor of composition and orchestral playing at the newly opened Royal College of Music, where he was sole conductor of the orchestra for almost thirty years …  Through his teaching posts at the Royal College of Music and Cambridge, Stanford exercised an unparalleled influence on the development of British music.  His pupils included Arthur Bliss, Rutland Boughton [who, incidentally, went to my old school, Aylesbury Grammar], Frank Bridge, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Walford Davies, Eugene Goossens, Herbert Howells, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, and Ralph Vaughan Williams …  In more recent years, Stanford’s importance as a composer has been restored and his name is often linked with those of Parry, Mackenzie, and Elgar in studies of the renaissance in British music during the late nineteenth century’ (Oxford DNB).

The 1885 Birmingham Musical Festival featured Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Cowen’s Sleeping Beauty, Gounod’s Mors et Vita, Thomas Anderton’s Yule Tide, Handel’s Messiah, Dvořák’s The Spectre’s Bride, and Stanford’s The Three Holy Children, ‘an important work produced at an important festival.  It is constructed in a fine and masterly manner, and much of its music is quite elevated in outlook’ (Porte, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, p. 27).

Amazingly, the volume was Stanford’s own, signed by him on the front flyleaf and inscribed ‘To Dr Villiers Stanford with the compliments of the Committee’ on the front free endpaper, where twenty of the other composers and performers involved in the Festival have also signed their names: (in alphabetical order) Thomas Anderton (1836–1903), composer; Emma Albani (1847–1930), Canadian soprano; Frederick Bridge (1844–1924), Organist of Westminster Abbey; Frederic Cowen (1852–1935), composer; Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), who conducted the premiere of The Spectre’s Bride; Allan James Foli (1835–1899), Irish bass; Cecilia Hutchinson, soprano; Frederic King (1853–1933), English baritone; Edward Lloyd (1845–1927), English tenor; Joseph Maas (1847–1886), English tenor; Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (1847–1935), Scottish composer, whose Violin Concerto was performed at the Festival by Sarasate; Robert Watkins-Mills, English bass-baritone; Janet Patey (1842–1894), Scottish contralto; Ebenezer Prout (1835–1909), composer, whose Symphony No. 3 was written for the Festival; Hans Richter (1843–1916); Charles Santley (1834–1922), English baritone; Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908); William Stockley, conductor of the Festival Choral Society; Zelia Trebelli (1838–1892), French contralto; and Anna Katherine Williams, oratorio singer.