Sir Charles Villiers Stanford

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (b Dublin, 30 Sept 1852; d London, 29 March 1924). British composer, teacher and conductor.

A prodigiously gifted musician of great versatility, he, along with Parry and Mackenzie, did much to forge the new standards of the so-called ‘renaissance’ in British music at the end of the 19th century. As a composer he brought a technical brilliance to almost all genres, though success in opera, in which he aspired to excel, generally eluded him until the end of his life. In spite of his stature as a composer (particularly in the province of church music), he is perhaps best known as a teacher of sveral generations of British composers who passed through his hands at the RCM and Cambridge University.