Thank you, Ralph, and I’m glad you think the Sixth Symphony worth hearing. Most of Stanford’s music is!
As for his relations with Elgar, both were difficult men but Stanford was a great supporter of Elgar in his earlier years: he conducted his music, agitated vigorously for a Cambridge doctorate after the success of the ‘Enigma’, seeing Elgar as ‘the most prominent and the most brilliant of the younger generation’ (it was awarded a few months later) and, along with Parry, put him up for membership of the Athenaeum. Quite what went wrong isn’t clear but Elgar seemingly never cared for Stanford or his music and perhaps jealousy at Elgar’s success on Stanford’s part contributed.
When Elgar was appointed Peyton Professor of Music at Birmingham University in 1904, Stanford wrote him a letter that Elgar found "odious" – it hasn’t survived so we don’t know why, but he retaliated in his inaugural lecture with disobliging remarks about composers of rhapsodies which were widely seen as aimed at Stanford and which Michael Kennedy described as "an insensitive blunder". The two men didn’t speak for seventeen years; Stanford, although unwell, attended Lady Elgar’s burial in 1920 and said to Billy Reed, "Tell him I had to come" before departing in tears but Elgar was unmoved. A reconciliation of sorts took place in 1922 at the unveiling of a memorial tablet to Parry in Gloucester Cathedral when Stanford offered his hand saying "Let’s forget all about it". Elgar never seems to have accepted there was any wrong on his part.
Perhaps another great British composer, Vaughan Williams, should have the last word! "In Stanford's music the sense of style, the sense of beauty, the feeling of a great tradition is never absent."
Message Thread
« Back to index | View thread »
Thank you for taking part in the MusicWeb International Forum.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb