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The Life and Music of Charles Wood

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Reassesses the life, music and enduring influence of Charles Wood, a central figure in British and Irish music and one of the foremost teachers of his generation.Charles Wood (1866-1926), Armagh ch...
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  • 12 May 2026
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Reassesses the life, music and enduring influence of Charles Wood, a central figure in British and Irish music and one of the foremost teachers of his generation.


Charles Wood (1866-1926), Armagh chorister and student of Chares Villiers Stanford, was one of the most significant figures in British and Irish music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and one of Britain's most important teachers.

This study not only evaluates the substance of Wood's ecclesiastical music, in which, together with Stanford, his contribution was pre-eminent, but also his work in other genres, such as secular vocal music, arrangements of Irish folksong and the Irish cultural revival, orchestral music, opera and, in particular, the string quartet. Wood also found himself at the heart of a new antiquarian revival of early music, plainsong, psalmody and hymnody where his knowledge was uniquely encyclopaedic. This book offers a reassessment of his lasting legacy, the admiration he drew from figures such as Vaughan Williams, Dent and Tippett, and also discusses a considerable series of posthumous publications.
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Price: $170.00
Pages: 418
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Boydell Press
Series: Irish Musical Studies
Publication Date: 12 May 2026
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781837654109
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Classical, Art music, orchestral and formal music, MUSIC / History & Criticism, MUSIC / Religious / Christian, History of music, Theory of music and musicology
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List of Music Examples
List of Analytical Tables
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Sigla and Abbreviations

1 Armagh Chorister and London Student (1866-1887)
2 From RCM Student to Cambridge Organist: Songs, Madrigals and Service Music (1888-1892)
3 The Swinburne Ode, A Cambridge Fellowship and A Passion for Antiquarianism (1893-1896)
4 Irish Music, A Cambridge Lectureship, Marriage and the 'Sarsfield' Variations (1897-1900)
5 Australia, Choral Success and An Operatic Setback (1901-1907)
6 The Winds of Change and A Rediscovery of the Quartet (1908-1913)
7 'Expectans expectavi': The War and the Last Quartets (1914-1918)
8 The Final Years: A Flowering of Church Music (1919-1926)
9 Epilogue: The Posthumous Composer

Appendix: List of Works
Bibliography
Index of Works
General Index