Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) is best remembered for his contribution to church music, but also composed a good number of major instrumental works, eleven operas, chamber music, keyboard works for piano and organ and many other compositions. By the time he went up to Queen’s College, Cambridge, Stanford had already written a substantial number of orchestral and vocal works. As an undergraduate, his studies in classics suffered because he was not only an organ scholar but also composed and performed as a piano soloist and developed his skills as a conductor. The canticles sung at Choral Evensong today were first performed in August 1879 by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, where Stanford had been appointed deputy organist in 1873. He made his first trip to the continent that summer, where he met Brahms. His appointment as organist in 1874 allowed him to continue musical studies in Germany during one term and the vacation period in each of the following two years. Stanford’s love of the music of Schumann and Brahms marked him as a classicist at a time when many music-lovers were divided into classical or modernist camps. During his time in Leipzig (1875) and Berlin (1876), Stanford concentrated on a violin concerto (1875), a symphony (composed for the Alexandra Palace prize in 1876), chamber music, and incidental music for Tennyson’s play, Queen Mary (1876). When he returned to Cambridge in January 1877, Trinity College was conscious of his growing stature as a composer and took steps to retain his expertise of their young organist and to strengthen the standard of singing. When Stanford was appointed the permanent organist in May 1877, two full weekly practices were instituted as well as six hours of instruction per week for the boys during term time (and four hours per week during the vacation). Stanford expanded the choir’s repertoire by introducing challenging works by other composers and his own ‘Queen’s’ service, while also continuing to compose instrumental works. In 1879 he turned his attention to a Service in B Flat, Op. 10, which marked a fundamental change for Anglican church music because it challenged the accepted norm for choral primacy. This is not to suggest that Stanford disregarded text, but that the musical and structural cohesion of the canticle and service received equal consideration. Stanford added a more lyrical and instrumental orientation to the music of the liturgy and strengthened the role of the organ, as Thomas Attwood Walmisley (1814-1856) had done in his Evening Service in D minor, but also brought a more symphonic approach to the structure of the service and canticles by integrating a Morning Service, Evening Service and Office of Holy Communion in a single work. For example, the Magnificat is a Scherzo (a ternary structure in which the Gloria functions as a recapitulation) while the Nunc dimittis is a slow movement that repeats a Gloria found in the Benedictus and Jubilate Deo. The success of the service persuaded Stanford (and his publisher) to produce five more complete services, in addition to separate editions of his evening canticles. The critic Nicholas Temperley would later write that it was due to Stanford that settings of the Anglican church services regained their full place beside the anthem as a worthy object of artistic invention and expressed the view that Stanford’s services in A (1880), F (1889) and C (1909) were the most important and enduring additions from those years to the cathedral repertory, but he also declared that in Stanford’s church music one finds a thoroughly satisfying artistic experience, but one that is perhaps lacking in deeply felt religious impulse. Stanford might well have found solace in the fact that other critics levelled similar charges concerning the religious music of Brahms. This video of the Magnificat is sung by the Choir of Winchester Cathedral with a full orchestra, making the quality of the instrumental music more evident and providing an indication of the challenges that would confront choristers and organists accustomed to less challenging canticles.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 03:36:21 +0000
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