CHARLES VILLIERS Stanford is one of the greatest composers to have ever come out of Ireland. Yet in Ireland, both the man, and his music, continue to go somewhat under the radar - certainly in comparison to his predecessor, John Field.
However, Stanford (1852 - 1924 ) has a champion in the great Irish pianist, Finghin Collins, who has been on something of a mission to make the composer more widely known and appreciated in Ireland. With the RTE National Symphony Orchestra in 2011, he recorded the album, Finghin Collins Plays Stanford (“Collins has flair, energy, and lyrical poise to spare,” said BBC Music magazine ), and this month, in his role as artistic director of Music for Galway, he will present a weekend dedicated to Stanford, his music, his influences, and his legacy.
“I’ve been aware of Stanford for a long time, since I took singing lessons when I was a child, from my neighbour, Ken Shellard,” Finghin (pictured below ) tells me during our Wednesday afternoon interview. “He was a music lover and had this huge collection of albums and CDs, he influenced me a lot.
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“He would always turn me on to new things, he would give me records for my birthday, and was bonkers about Stanford. I remember we were in the National Concert Hall, we were in the John Field Room, and he turned to me and said the main auditorium should be named after Stanford. That’s how much he loves him.”
In 2010, Finghin became the first pianist to play Stanford’s Piano Concerto No 2 in Cm at the BBC Proms. “I was playing the Royal Albert Hall, where the Proms always take place,” he recalls. “It is right across the road from the Royal College of Music. Stanford was the first professor of music there, so it felt fitting.”
‘Masterful’
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Sharon Carty. Photo:- Joe Duffy
Music for Galway’s annual midwinter festival, entitled ‘Stanford’, takes place from Friday January 21 to Sunday 23 in the Town Hall Theatre and St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, and features five concerts, two talks, and two documentary films. A selection of concerts will also be available via live stream.
Performing will be mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty; clarinettist John Finucane; Finghin Collins; the ConTempo Quartet; Collegium Choir, conducted by Mark Duley; tenor soloist Christopher Bowen; flutist Ríona Ó Duinnín; John Leonard on bassoon; Hannah Miller on horn; bassist Dominic Dudley; and the RIAM Student Quartet. There will also be talks about Stanford by musicologist Jeremy Dibble.
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John Finucane.
The weekend will hear such work by Stanford as the String Quartet No 6 Op 122 (“Written in 1910, a mature work,” says Finghin ); the Fantasy No 1 for clarinet quintet in Gm, the Clarinet Sonata Op 129 (“A very romantic work, he loved writing for clarinet” ); the Nonet in F Op 95; and the songs ‘Praised be Diana’, ‘Corydon’, ‘Heraclitus’, ‘Chillingham’, and ‘The Blue Bird’.
As The Times noted, Stanford’s music is “dramatically significant, as well as beautiful in itself. It has, moreover, that quality so rare among modern composers – style.”
“His music is very beautifully written,” says Finghin. “I think he hasn’t been more famous because he didn’t break any barriers, like Debussy and Stavinsky were doing. He was very traditional - he was heavily influenced by Schumann, Brahms, and German romanticism - but was masterful in the way he wrote for the orchestra. It’s done with wonderful technique and structure.
An Irishman in London
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Detail from a portrait of Charles Villiers Stanford.
Stanford’s reputation in his native country has also suffered neglect, through no fault of his own, but through the social effects of the sectarian and colonial nature of British rule in Ireland.
“I think he fell between two stools,” says Finghin. “He was Protestant and from the ascendancy, so in Ireland, he was looked on as British, but in Britain he was looked on as Irish. He was sent to London fairly young and I don’t think he ever came back to Ireland.”
However, as Finghin points out, being Irish was important to Stanford. “There is his Irish Symphony and his Irish Rhapsodies, and there are songs about missing home, like ‘Irish Skies’, about being in London wanting to be back in Ireland.” An Irishman in London, writing home thoughts from abroad in the form of a song - now what could be more Irish than that?
'Significant legacy'
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Samuel Coleridge Taylor.
Stanford not only left us great music, he also bequeathed a significant legacy. He was the teacher of Rebecca Clarke, Muriel Herbert, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, and also the teacher of Frank Bridge, who would become the tutor of Benjamin Britten.
The midwinter festival will celebrate this with performances of works by the above composers. Most interesting of all is Samuel Coleridge Taylor.
“Samuel Coleridge Taylor was born in London to an African father and an English mother, who named him after the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” says Finghin. “It was seen he was exceptionally talented and was sent to study with Stanford. As a mixed-race man, he would have been very much in the minority at that time. He later did a lot of work in America, and was important in terms of African-American choirs. With his music, he gave black choirs a sense of fitting in, and a classical music with which they could identify.
“One of his most important works was ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ [January 22, St Nicholas’], from a poem by Longfellow, which we will be performing. He was very influenced by his African heritage, and we’ll be performing two of his African Dances for violin and piano [January 23, Town Hall], which are very exciting.”
The festival culminates on January 23 at 6.15pm in a film double bill by Charles Kaufmann, the artistic director of the Longfellow Chorus, USA. The first is the world theatre premiere of That's None of My Business, part of the official selection of Venezia Shorts Italy 2021, about an attempt to desegregate a concert in Mississippi in 1963. This will be followed by the documentary, Samuel Coleridge Taylor and His Music in America, 1900–1912.
Dates, times, and tickets
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Charles Villiers Stanford.
Shows will be in line with Government Covis-19 guidelines and take place in the Town Hall Theatre on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 at 6pm, and Sunday 23 at 11am and 3pm. The talks by Jeremy Dibble will be on Friday 21 at 3pm and Saturday 22 at 11am (to be delivered remotely ). The St Nicholas’ concert is on January 22 at 2pm.
Tickets for individual shows are €20/18/16/10, expect the choral concert which is €15/13.50/11/6. The film is €8/7. Talks are free. A festival ticket is €95/86/82.
Tickets to see the shows via streaming are €15 (main concerts ), €10 (choral concert ), €8/7 (film ), while a festival ticket is €75/€67.50.
Booking is via www.musicforgalway.ie and the Town Hall Theatre (www.tht.ie or 091 569777 ).
