Stanford was natural within Dublin, the merely boy of John Stanford, examiner in the court of chancery (Dublin) & clerk of the Crown, Co. Meath. Two parents were accomplished amateur musicians; his father sang bass and his mother was a pianist. Charles trained under R.M. Levey (fiddle), Miss Meeke, Mrs Joseph Robinson, Miss Flynn & Michael Quarry (piano); & Sir Robert Stewart taught him composition and organ. His precocious ability was recorded within an article in the Musical theater Days around December 1898.

He come to London as a pupil of Arthur O'Leary and Ernst Pauer around 1862, and within 1870 won a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge, moving to Trinity College in 1873, and next J.L. Hopkins when college organist, the post he held until 1892. His appointment when conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society gave him great chance, & a fame which a society before long found was in the main due to Stanford's energies.

At that period women were non intromit the chorus, however in the period of his tenure several interesting performances & revivals took place. In the years 1874 to 1877 he was given leave of absence for a portion of every season to complete his studies within Germany, where he learnt from either Reinecke and Kiel. He took his B.The. degree in 1874 and M.A. within 1878, and was given a honorary degree of Mus. D., at Oxford in 1883, and at Cambridge in 1888.

He 1st became called the composer by having his incidental music to Tennyson's Queen Mary (Lyceum, 1876); and around 1881 his first opera, The Veiled Prophet, was given at Hanover (revived at Covent Garden, 1893); this was succeeded by Savonarola (Hamburg, April, and Covent Garden, July 1884), and A Canterbury Pilgrims (Drury Lane, 1884). An extended interval separates these from either his late operas: ''Shamus O'Brien, the delicious piece of Irish striking writing (Opera Comique, 1896) Much Fuss Just about Nothing (Covent Garden, 1901), The Critic (Shaftesbury Theatre, London, 1916) and A Travelling Companion (David Lewis Theatre, Liverpool, 1925).

He was appointed prof of composition at a Royal College of Music in 1883; was conductor of the Bach Choir from 1886 to 1902; was professor of music at Cambridge, succeeding Sir G.A. Macfarren from 1887; conductor of the Leeds Philharmonic Society from 1897 to 1909, and of the Leeds Festival from 1901 to 1910. He was knighted in 1902.

Stanford was particularly known within his day for his choral works, in a main accredited for performances at the peachy English provincial festivals. These include ii oratorios, a Requiem (1897), a Stabat Mater (1907) and numbers of lay works, typically sustaining the marine theme, including A Retaliation (1886) The Voyage of Maeldune (1889), Songs of the Sea (1904) and Songs of the Fleet (1910). His church music still holds a central place among Anglican compositions; & his editions of Irish and more traditional songs were easily known.

His subservient works include heptad symphonies, five Irish Rhapsodies for orchestra, concertos for violin, clarinet and piano and many chamber compositions, including eight string quartets. He as well composed songs, part-songs, madrigals, and incident music to the Eumenides & Oedipus Rex'' (when performed at Cambridge), too when to Tennyson's Becket. His music shows a influence of Brahms and Schumann, and he was usually unsympathetic to further modern developments. Although there has recently been the revival of interest around his big works fallowing an extended period of negligence, his principal importance is typically held to exist as as a teacher of numerous English composers of the next generation, including Holst, Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge and Herbert Howells. He was notoriously irascible & quarrelled by having numbers of of his coeval, including Elgar. He published many books, including an autobiography, Pages from either an Unwritten Diary (1914).

List of Works
Orchestral Works Choral Works Magnificat & Nunc dimittis within B Flat op 10 Jubilate & Te Deum inside B Flat op 10 Magnificat & Nunc dimittis around The op 12 Magnificat & Nunc dimittis within F op 36 And We Saw A second Angel op37 #1 If Thou Shalt Confess op37 #2 Three Latin Motets piece of music 38 Justorum animae Coelos ascendit hodie Beati quorum via Magnificat & Nunc dimittis within E Flat (composed 1873) Pater Noster (composed 1874) The Lord is our Shepherd (composed 1886) Chamber Works

Bibliography

Jeremy Dibble - Charles Villiers Stanford: human & musician (Oxford: Oxford University Click, 2001)