"It Won't Do, Me Bhoy": Frank Bridge’s Fond Farewell to Stanford

Further to my short post about composer Frank Bridge’s tribute to Charles Villiers Stanford in the Music and Letters Journal, I found another short testimonial in the 1924 edition of the Royal College of Music Magazine. This included many contributions from eminent musicians who know or studied with him. Stanford was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music when it opened in 1882, and he taught composition there from then until his death in 1924. He was one of the architects of the English Musical Renaissance.

The list of contributors reads like a "who’s who" of British music: Alexander Mackenzie, George Dyson, Marion M. Scott, Edgar L. Bainton, Thomas F. Dunhill, Charles Wood, Rebecca Clarke, James Friskin, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Cecil Forsyth, and Cyril Rootham

Frank Bridge studied at the RCM from 1899 to 1903. This puts his "period of more than twenty years" into perspective- he is looking back at his formative student years from the height of his own career. Bridge’s recollection of Stanford’s contempt for the "vulgar" provides a perfect opening to explore the fascinating irony that he - who would eventually embrace a radical, dissonant modernism - still credited his old master’s traditionalist "refining influence" for providing the solid architectural foundation necessary to effectively break the rules.

Bridge wrote: “It may be that the perspective of an early impression is altered by the march of time, or indeed by the present day enthusiasms which inevitably dominate one’s point of view, but after a period of more than twenty years there remains the conviction that in Sir Charles Stanford we all had a master-mind at work. Whether during a composition lesson or at an orchestral rehearsal, one was conscious of the power and sincerity with which he exercised his art. His complete sympathy with the classics and their traditions was an outstanding quality which he happily imparted to all who came under his refining influence.

Who can forget his unfailing contempt for the meretricious and the vulgar, or, faced with a youthful harmonic indiscretion, the softened grin as he would say ‘It won’t do, me bhoy”’! [1]
Frank Bridge R.C.M. Magazine Vol.20/2 1924

As a fitting postscript, Ralph Vaughan Williams echoed this sentiment in the same volume:

"I suppose that all of us were inclined to fight Stanford in our time, but like the argumentative Irish servant, “we knew the master was right all the time.” It may have been galling at the moment to have one’s pet new harmony called “damnably ugly,” but it was just at that moment that we received the best of the many good lessons we had from him.

The intense hatred of anything unlovely, the duty of honest and complete workmanship, the sense of style and of a great tradition behind us—these were the lessons which we learnt from Stanford, lessons which no composer can afford to neglect."

Note:
[1] Bridge’s phonetic transcription of Stanford’s accent ("me bhoy") is a classic trope among Stanford’s pupils (Vaughan Williams and Holst often recalled similar quips). It highlights the blend of intimidation and affection his students felt.