Charles Villiers Stanford

[albion]

Recently revisiting the music of Stanford in conjunction with the biographies by Jeremy Dibble (OUP) and Paul Rodmell (Ashgate) I have been impressed once again by the strength and personality of the music by this supposed Brahms epigone. Thinking back to the bad old days when all that was available were the EMI LPs of the Irish Symphony and the Songs of the Sea/ Songs of the Fleet, it is remarkable just how blessed we have been in recent years with excellent recordings as the following list indicates (although unfortunately a few of these are now deleted):

7 Symphonies (Chandos under Vernon Handley and Naxos under David Lloyd-Jones - my vote goes for the latter)
6 Irish Rhapsodies (Chandos and the also the 4th on Lyrita)
3 Piano Concertos (1st on Hyperion, 2nd on both Chandos and Lyrita, 3rd on Lyrita)
Violin Concerto No.1 and Suite for Violin and Orchestra (Hyperion)
Cello Concerto (Lyrita)
Clarinet Concerto (Chandos, Naxos)
Concert Variations Down Among the Dead Men for Piano and Orchestra (Chandos)
Concert Piece for Organ and Orchestra (Chandos)
Prelude to Oedipus Rex (Chandos)
Requiem (Marco Polo, reissued on Naxos)
Stabat mater (Chandos)
The Revenge, Songs and the Sea, Songs of the Fleet (Chandos)
Piano Quintet, String Quintet No.1, String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2, Violin Sonatas (Hyperion)
Piano Quartet No.1, Piano Trio No.1 (ASV)
Cello Sonatas (Meridian)
Clarinet Sonata, Piano Trio No.3 (Naxos)
Piano music (Preludes 1st set on Priory, 2nd set on Olympia)
Organ Sonatas (Priory, reissued on Regis)
Church Services (Hyperion and Priory)
Songs (two volumes on Hyperion)

The glaring omission is the operas - especially Much Ado About Nothing (1901) and The Travelling Companion (1916). There are still a number of choral works which deserve professional recording - especially Elegiac Ode (1884), The Voyage of Maeldune (1889), the Te Deum (1898) and Merlin and the Gleam (1919). It would also be wonderful to hear the later string quartets and the best of his best Partsongs - of course, any future premiere recordings would be more than welcome!

I would encourage anybody new to Stanford to perhaps try the Irish Rhapsodies on Chandos (reissued together on a two-disc set coupled with Piano Concerto No.2), the inexpensive Naxos symphony cycle and either the Requiem or the Stabat mater. If your taste is for chamber music, I'm sure you will be hugely impressed with the Hyperion disc coupling the Piano Quintet and String Quintet No.1.

[Alan Howe]

How would you compare CVS with Parry?

[FBerwald]

I wouldn't. Just like I wouldn't compare Haydn with Mozart

[Alan Howe]

Oh, indulge me, please! I was trying to get a handle on a fellow-enthusiast's preferences, and the reasons for them. For what it's worth, I can't separate them at their best, but others may disagree...

[FBerwald]

Funny. even I can't separate Mozart and Haydn at times. thats t reason I posted the comment. But if u want me 2 dig a little deeper. Id say I prefer parry to Stanford, solely on the base of his symphonies. Parrys no. 5 (I feel) is more engaging than any of Stanfords except may be the 3rd.
As far as concertos go, Stanford takes the trophy for his Super-excellent Piano concerto no 2 and Violin concerto in D major.

[albion]

How would you compare CVS with Parry?

I don't think I can really compare them any more than FBerwald can - both are (to my mind at least) excellent composers who wrote significant quantities of music which attains a very high level. If pushed to the vaguest of generalisations, I would say that Parry's inspiration was more fitful than Stanford's but ran emotionally deeper (in works such as the 5th Symphony, The Soul's Ransom, the Ode on the Nativity and Songs of Farewell), whereas Stanford, with his far greater fluency and better technique, produced more immediately appealing music at a lower level of emotional engagement. Of course this does not account for the slow movement of his 6th Symphony or the Requiem.

I'm very much in favour of assessing each composer I encounter on stand-alone merit, i.e. how much I engage with them emotionally, intellectually or through pure enjoyment of the sounds that they present to my ear. In many ways, to put Parry and Stanford in double-harness is as misleading as the old practice (which seems laughable today) of coupling Bruckner and Mahler!

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Thoroughly agree with both the last 2 postings, and the safe conclusion is that surely Parry and Stanford stand absolutely neck to neck. Apart from other considerations the sheer variety of their work - orchestral, chamber, choral, keyboard, songs - puts them in the highest rank. And - at the cost of risking my neck - above Elgar.

Funny, but in my - very prejudiced view - there's a world of difference between Haydn and Mozart. The one is an infinitely rewarding composer. The other is a proper dapper little b----r. However hard I try I just sit there recoiling from his music and find it glib and artificial however well crafted it may be. But I promptly dive under cover having doubtless quite disgraced myself.

Peter

[Mark Thomas]

You've not disgraced yourself in my book, Peter.

As for the Parry/Stanford issue, I'm with Albion on assessing a composer on his own merits. However, my response to the question of the emotional content of their music is rather different to his. To me, Parry is a much more reserved and circumspect composer than Stanford, whose music I find absolutely seethes with emotion, to the extent that it can be quite wearying. Parry, in his best music, is a case of still waters running deep, whereas Stanford's heart is firmly on his sleeve. Hmmm.... maybe I'm not disagreeing with Albion at all? What I would say is that I respond to Stanford's music with huge affection and return to it again and again with pleasure and satisfaction, whereas I respect Parry's music greatly but somehow don't make the same warm personal connection with it that is prompted by Stanford's.

[Alan Howe]

I'm with Mark, I think. But, if pushed, I might take, say, Parry's 4th over any of Stanford's seven. Personally, I think the comparison's fascinating - they are two wonderful composers. Better than Elgar, though? Not for me: there's an extra degree of originality with EE that trumps anything by CVS or HP. Nevertheless, the opprobium heaped upon the two older composers is ridiculous and I return to their music with greater and greater pleasure these days.
PS. Did I say I preferred Parry 4? Well, I absolutely adore Stanford 1...

[JimL]

Stanford far outdid Parry in the concerto field.  The only concerto of Parry that I know of is the PC in F-sharp Major (1880).  Stanford composed some concertos that still sit on shelves awaiting resurrection. 

BTW, forgive me for asking but I'm a little stumped about how to pronounce Parry.  Due to the spelling, I guess.  Does it rhyme with sorry or berry?

[eschiss1]

Not a concerto exactly but there is also Parry's organ concertstück.
Stanford- hrm. 3 piano concertos (all recorded), cello concerto (recorded), 2 violin concertos (one recorded, one may only be in violin/piano form but I'd like to hear it and see it published), clarinet concerto (recorded) - what else named concerto?

[JimL]

There is an early PC from his student days in B-flat still in MS.  There is also another VC in D that he suppressed along with the Cello Concerto, also still in MS.  I believe these are all still extant, although I don't recall where.

[Balapoel]

Concertante work from Stanford:
Cello:
Rondo (1869), unperformed
Concerto in d minor (1880)
Ballata and Ballabile, Op. 160 (1918)

Clarinet:
Concerto in a minor, Op. 80 (1902)

Piano:
Concerto in Bb (1874)
Concerto (no. 1) in G, Op. 59 (1894)
Concerto (no. 2) in c minor, Op. 126 (1911)
Concerto (no. 3) in Eb, Op. 171 (1919)
Concert variations on an English Theme, Op. 71 (1898)

Violin
Suite in D, Op. 32 (1888)
Concerto (no. 1) in D, Op. 74
Concerto (no. 2) in g minor, Op. 162 (1918)
Variations, Op. 180 (1921)
An Irish Concertino in d for violin, cello, Op. 161 (1918)

I have 9 of these 14 concertante pieces, my favorite would have to be the second piano concerto.
Cheers,
Balapoel

[JimL]

There is another, early VC, which may actually have been performed.  All I know about it is that it is in D and was composed for Pacini, possibly during the mid-to-late 1870s.

[Josh]

Pacini the awesome opera composer? He died in 1867, and I don't know if he played the violin, but was it in honour of him? Or another Pacini? If it was in honour of the opera composer, I'd absolutely love to hear it, especially if it was some kind of stylistic-homage piece. A lot of people ridicule and hate that kind of thing, but if done well, it can be really fantastic. I'm pretty into Pacini's music, actually. I've got six of his complete operas, and a very generous someone helped me finally - literally after years of dreaming of it and thinking it was an unperformed/unrecorded work - get to listen to a performance of his Sinfonia Dante. That old Italian had a real knack for the dramatic. If Stanford was like many musicians of the 19th century, he might very well have liked Pacini.

There's a local radio station that's been giving Stanford some loving over the past year, much to my delight. In fact, just TODAY they played his entire 3rd Symphony! http://www.wvtf.org is the station, if you're interested. It's based in Virginia, in the USA. Just a couple of months ago, they put on his Concert Variations on an English Theme. The sheer quantity of music that I listen to has one drawback... it was during work, and I sometimes have to drive to schools, and I have this station on the radio the whole time that I'm driving. I'm hearing the last 3 minutes or so of this work after I start the vehicle, thinking how exciting it is, and how it sounds vaguely familiar. I make a special internal vow before it finishes that I'll memorise the composer and work to seek it out later. Then the announcer gives the title and composer and yep, I have it in my collection, and yep... heard it more than once! It's a long, convoluted story, but if not for this radio station, I'd probably never have heard of Charles Stanford (or Raff, for that matter).

Wow, has this gotten rambly.  I just wanted to say, this radio station also put on Stanford's entire 5th symphony just a couple of months ago as well. It's quite rare that radio stations in the US will put on non-famous works of that length on in their entirety. At least one of his Irish Rhapsodies, a few chamber works, the Op.32 Suite for Violin and Orchestra, and probably a few other things have gotten airtime in the rural backwoods mountains of Virginia in the US-of-A. The 5th Symphony was aired with complimentary words by the announcer as well, if my memory's right.

Stanford is one that appeals to me quite a bit, and more over time. He wrote works that sound backwards-looking in a lot of ways. Coming from me, that's a huge compliment. His Symphony #7 came out in 1911. To avoid bothering anyone, I won't mention anything specific, but there was a lot of music written in and about 1911 (some of it quite famous) that makes me feel physically nauseated after a single minute. Stanford's Symphony #7 is far, far from that company in my book!

I love composers who feel that their position coming after a musical period gives them a vantage to try to use their future knowledge to write more in that period's style, rather than feeling that they have to rush away from it as fast as possible. A lot of composers (Pergolesi, Berlioz, Schönberg?) see a ladder and don't want to climb it, they just want to add new rungs on top. Other composers see a ladder built by others (Moscheles, Czerny, Foote?) and think that they can do plenty well without trying to extend it. After all, eventually it gets too tall (I'll avoid naming names) and just becomes unsafe, falls over, and it's just a complete wreck. In different cases, to my own particular taste, I do not see either ladder-builders or ladder-climbers as being superior or inferior to the other. I realise that most music scholars - practically all of them - consider only ladder-builders (or those they believe were ladder-builders) as being worthy of true consideration, but I've heard too much amazing music by composers I consider to be not-too-original. Ferdinand Ries is amazing in my book, and I agree completely with those who say he wasn't all that original. So what? Stanford doesn't sound to my untrained ears to be particularly of his time, especially in the 1910s. That's fine. Give me his 1910s music over most everything else that was composed in that time!

... wow, this may very well be the most poorly-written message ever posted to this forum. I'm too lazy and tired to clean it up right now, but I'll delete it if anyone finds it incomprehensible.

Summary? me like stanford. stanford maked good musics.