Charles Villiers Stanford

STANFORD, (Sir) Charles Villiers. b. Dublin, 30 September 1852; d. London, 29 March 1924. The son of an Irish Protestant lawyer (who was himself a talented bass singer and cellist), he studied principally with Robert Prescott Stewart*, Richard M. Levey, and Michael Quarry, and Arthur O’Leary in London, before entering Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1870 as organ scholar. He became conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society in 1873, and migrated the same year to Trinity College, being appointed organist in 1874. He spent the last six months of 1874, 1875 and 1876 studying in Germany, first in Leipzig with Reinecke (1874-75) and later with Kiel in Berlin (1876). On returning to...