20.11.2024
Final Stanford Lunchtime Lecture Takes Place on Tuesday
The final free lunchtime lecture celebrating the life of Charles Villiers Stanford takes place in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on Tuesday next, November 26, at 1.10pm. The series has been organised in association with Dundalk Institute of Technology to mark the centenary of his death.
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 has offered an opportunity to explore the life of Stanford from four different perspectives given by Dr David O’Shea, Dr Adèle Commins, Dr Paul Rodmell and finally Professor Jeremy Dibble, who delivers Tuesday’s lecture.
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 on Tuesday 26 November. 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 35rd 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.