Wood, Charles (1886–1926)

Irish music scholar, teacher, and composer. He taught at the Royal College of Music in London from 1883 and at Cambridge University from 1897. As a composer he is remembered for his church music.

Wood learnt music from the organist of Armagh Cathedral, where his father was a lay vicar, and studied at the Royal College of Music in London 1883–87, becoming professor there in 1888. He conducted the University Music Society at Cambridge 1888–94, and took a doctorate in music there in 1894. In 1897 he became music lecturer to the University and in 1924 succeeded Charles Stanford as professor of music.

Works Stage opera The Pickwick Papers (after Dickens; 1922); incidental music to Euripides' Ion and Iphigenia in Tauris.

Orchestral and vocal Ode to the West Wind (1890) and The Song of the Tempest for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra (performed 1902); Ode on Music (Swinburne; 1894), Ode on Time (Milton; 1898), Dirge for Two Veterans (Whitman), Ballad of Dundee for chorus and orchestra (performed 1904); Passion according to St Mark (1921).

Chamber eight string quartets.