22.10.2024
Charles Villiers Stanford, composer, conductor & professor, explored in November lecture series at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
A series of free lunchtime lectures will be held at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin this November 2024 on Tuesdays at 1.10pm on the subject of ‘Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924): Composer, Conductor, Professor’. This follows on from a series of events held to celebrate the life of C.V. Stanford this year, on the centenary of his death, which included an organ recital series at St Patrick’s cathedral and the recent Stanford Festival held in Dublin from Friday 11 to Sunday 13 October.
Since the publication of the two biographies of Stanford in 2002 by Paul Rodmell and Jeremy Dibble on the 150th anniversary of his birth (the latter of which was launched in the crypt of Christ Church), Stanford’s memory has been rekindled and more finely appreciated. Verdi heralded Stanford’s 1897 Requiem as the work of a master, while Vaughan Williams and Finzi were indignant at the neglect of his work on the centenary of his birth in 1952.
The November lecture series offers an opportunity to explore the life of Stanford from four different perspectives. On Tuesday 5 November, Dr David O’Shea of the Technological University, Dublin, whose book, The Choral Foundation of the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle: Constitution, Liturgy, Music, 1814–1922, was published this year as part of the Irish Musical Studies series by the Boydell Press, will talk about Stanford and Dublin, the city of his birth and his relationship to it. Dr Adèle Commins, Head of the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music at Dundalk Institute of Technology, who encouraged the cathedral to host the series, will address Stanford’s operatic oeuvre with particular focus on his opera (recently revived), Shamus O’Brien, on Tuesday 12 November.
The second half of the lecture series will be given by Stanford’s two biographers. Dr Paul Rodmell, senior lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Birmingham will discuss Stanford’s larger scale orchestral compositions on Tuesday 19 November, focusing on his third ‘Irish’, fifth and seventh symphonies. Finally, on Tuesday 27 November, Professor Jeremy Dibble, recently retired from Durham University, who has just revised and expanded his Stanford biography published 22 years ago, will speak on Stanford and choirs. Appropriately, it is in a cathedral setting that Stanford’s choral works will be considered, given that his church music has been a well–burnished staple of the repertoire that has kept his memory alive over the last century.
The lecture series has been generously supported by both the Cathedral and the Friends of Christ Church, as well as being kindly facilitated by Professor Alan Ford. The lecture series is the 35th in a series which has run with some regularity for 27 years since the first on the Augustinian canons regular in October 1997. It takes up the baton from a series of memorial lectures for former dean’s verger, Joe Coady, which ran from 1987–2003, and which in turn recalls the annual St Stephen’s day lectures begun in 1891 by the cathedral architect, Sir Thomas Drew, which ran until at least the 1960s. Admission is free, and all are most welcome. For further information, email the cathedral research advisor, Stuart Kinsella at archives@christchurch.ie.
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