Thanks, Nick, though, as you’d expect, I don’t entirely agree! That Stanford was not in the same league as Elgar is unarguable and I made that point myself; perhaps ‘of the first rank’ was an ill-chosen phrase and he falls within Richard Strauss’s self-proclaimed category: ‘I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer’! I agree that quantity of works is no measure of quality, indeed suggests that some will be of lesser quality, but there are many fine works and I’d argue that he was much more than a ‘minor figure’.
As for his animosity towards Elgar, that was surely very much a two-way thing. Stanford, as the senior composer, was very supportive of Elgar, conducting his music and using his influence to get him an honorary doctorate at Cambridge as well as membership of the Atheneum. Things went awry when Elgar was appointed Peyton Professor of Music at Birmingham: Stanford wrote a letter (which doesn’t seem to have survived) which upset the unusually sensitive Elgar and he responded with remarks in his inaugural lecture that deeply (and understandably) wounded Stanford. Both appear to have been difficult men and Elgar at least as much blame for the falling-out. Perhaps Christopher Howell might have some ‘Thoughts’ on the issue!
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