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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 - 29 March 1924) was an Irish composer, teacher and conductor. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, he was educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He was instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform there.
While still an undergraduate, Stanford was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1882 was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life. From 1887 he combined the post with that of professor of music at Cambridge. As a teacher, Stanford was sceptical about modernism, and based his instruction chiefly on classical principles as exemplified in the music of Brahms. Among his pupils were rising composers whose fame went on to surpass his own, such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. As a conductor, Stanford held posts with the Bach Choir and the Leeds triennial music festival.
Stanford composed a substantial number of concert works, including seven symphonies, but his best-remembered pieces are his choral works for church performance, chiefly composed in the Anglican tradition. He was a dedicated composer of opera, but none of his nine completed operas has endured in the general repertory. Some critics regarded Stanford, together with Hubert Parry and Alexander Mackenzie, as responsible for a renaissance in English music. However, after conspicuous success as a composer in the last two decades of the 19th century, he found his music eclipsed in the 20th century by that of Edward Elgar and some of his own former pupils.
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