Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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672 STANFOED STANFORD
p. 785). He matriculated at Queen's College,
Cambridge, in 1870, as choral scholar. On his
appointment in 1873 to the important post of
organist to Trinity College, in succession to
Dr. J. L. Hopkins, he migrated ' ' as an undergraduate
to that college, from which he gi-aduated
in 1874 in Classical Honours. He had
fiUed the post of conductor of the Cambridge
Amateur Vocal Guild for a year or two before
this, and had brought Sir R. Stewart's cantata,
'The Eve of St. John,' to a hearing in 1872.
This Society was soon joined to the Cambridge
University Musical Society (the choir of which
had hitherto consisted of male voices only),
and Stanford raised the position of the Society to
a remarkably high level, incidentally making
Cambridge an important musical centre. He
was appointed conductor of the Society in 1873,
and his activity was not long in bearing good
fruit, in the first performances in England of
Schumann's 'Faust' (Part iii.)and many other
things, such as Brahms's ' Rhapsodie.' In each
year, from 1874 to 1876, he was given leave of
absence in order to prosecute his studies first
with Reineoke at Leipzig, and then with Kiel
at Berlin. In the spring of 1876, on the production
of Tennyson's 'Queen Mary' at the
Lyceum Theatre, the incidental music was
provided by Stanford, having been composed
at the poet's suggestion. This work, and a
symphony which gained the second prize in a
competition held at the Alexandra Palace, in
the same year, brought the young composer's
name into prominence, and from that time
onwards he has been more or less regularly
before the public as composer and conductor.
In 1877, when he proceeded M.A., he organised
and directed a concert at which works by Brahms
and Joachim were performed for the first time
in England, on the occasion when the Honorary
Mus.D. degree was offered to both composers,
and accepted by the latter. This was the
first of many concerts at which the recipients
of honorary musical degrees were similarly
honoured. In 1877, too, a Festival Overture
was played at the Gloucester Festival, and
subsequently given at the Crystal Palace. A
setting of Psalm xlvi. was produced at Cambridge,
and afterwards at a Richter concert.
The symphony just mentioned, in B flat, was
played at the Crystal Palace in March 1879,
but like a second
' Elegiac ' symphony in
D minor, played at Cambridge in 1882, concertos
for PF. and for violoncello, etc., is not
included in the list of opus-numbers. Stanford's
first opera, The Veiled Prophet of ' Khorassan,
to a libretto by W. Barclay Squire, produced
at the Court Theatre, Hanover, Feb. 6, 1881,
was only given once in England, at Covent
Garden, July 26, 1893 ; an orchestral serenade
(op. 17) was produced at the Birmingham
Festival of 1882. In 1883 he received the
hon. degree of Mus.D. at Oxford, and the same
degree at Cambridge in 1888. In 1885 he
succeeded Otto Goldsohmidt as conductor of the
Bach Choir, and in 1887 was elected Professor
of Music in the University of Cambridge, on
the death of Sir G. A. Macfarren. He devoted
his energies to improving the standard
of general education required for the musical
degrees at Cambridge, and in this and many
other ways his influence on the music of the
University, and the country at large, has been
of great importance. On the opening of the
Royal College of Music he became Professor of
Composition, conductor of the orchestra and
of the annual operatic performances, which have
maintained a high standard of excellence, and
which have brought many neglected works, old
and new, to a hearing. In 1892 he resigned
the post of organist to Trinity College, and has
since lived in London. In 1901 he was
appointed conductor of the Leeds Festival, and
received the honour of knighthood ; in 1902 he
gave up the oouductorship of the Bach Choir.
In 1904 he was elected a member of the Royal
Academy of Arts at Berlin.
Stanford's Irish descent gives his music a
strong individuality, which is not only evident
in his arrangements of Irish songs and in his
work as a collector (see Irish Music), but stands
revealed in his ' Irish Symphony ' (op. 28), in
the opera, Shamus ' O'Brien ' (op. 61), the two
orchestral ' Irish Rhapsodies ' (opp. 78 and 84),
the ' Irish Fantasies ' for violin, and in many
other definitely Irish compositions. The easy
flow of melody, and the feeling for the poetical
and romantic things in legendary lore (illustrated
in the early song, La ' Belle Dame sans Merci,'
the Voyage ' of Maeldune,' and many other
places), are ppculiarly Irish traits ; but his rare
mastery of every resource of orchestra or voices,
the thoroughness of his workmanship, and his
remarkable skill as a teacher of composition,
are qualities not generally associated even with
the more brilliant natives of Ireland. His
wonderful versatility allows him to adopt, successfully,
styles far removed from one another
that of the Latin settings of 'Te Deum,'
' Requiem,'
'
Stabat Mater,' and of the Mass in
G, has an aflSnity with the Italian composers
of the 18th century. Part of his oratorio,
'
Eden, ' is strictly modal in utterance, a large
number of his instrumental compositions are in
the classical idioms of Germany, and his use of
the fantastic or rhapsodical style of Ireland has
been already referred to. In yet another style
he has won what is perhaps the greatest success
he has yet achieved : the early song, ' In praise
of Neptune,' from op. 19, may have been a kind
of essay in the nautical style, which reached its
full fruition in the splendid Revenge ' ' (Leeds
Festival, 1896), the choral ballad which isknown
and loved wherever the best choral music is
practised. The five ' Songs of the Sea ' (op, 91),
for baritone solo, male chorus, and orchestra,