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Henry Wood (conductor)
Encyclopedia
Sir Henry Joseph Wood, CH (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concert
s, known as the Proms
. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
Born in modest circumstances to parents who encouraged his musical talent, Wood started his career as an organist. During his studies at the Royal Academy of Music
, he came under the influence of the voice teacher Manuel Garcia
and became his accompanist. After similar work for Richard D'Oyly Carte
's opera companies on the works of Arthur Sullivan
and others, Wood became the conductor of a small operatic touring company. He was soon engaged by the larger Carl Rosa Opera Company
. One notable event in his operatic career was conducting the British premiere of Tchaikovsky
's Eugene Onegin
in 1892.
From the mid-1890s until his death, Wood focused on concert conducting. He was engaged by the impresario Robert Newman
to conduct a series of promenade concerts at the Queen's Hall
, offering a mixture of classical and popular music at low prices. The series was successful, and Wood conducted annual promenade series until his death in 1944. By the 1920s, Wood had steered the repertoire entirely to classical music. When the Queen's Hall was destroyed by bombing in 1941, the Proms moved to the Royal Albert Hall
.
Wood declined the chief conductorships of the New York Philharmonic
and Boston Symphony Orchestras, believing it his duty to serve music in the United Kingdom. In addition to the Proms, he conducted concerts and festivals throughout the country and also trained the student orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music. He had an enormous influence on the musical life of Britain over his long career: he and Newman greatly improved access to classical music, and Wood raised the standard of orchestral playing and nurtured the taste of the public, presenting a vast repertoire of music spanning four centuries.
, London, the only child of Henry Joseph Wood and his wife Martha, née Morris. Wood senior had started in his family's pawnbroking
business, but by the time of his son's birth he was trading as a jeweller, optician and engineering modeller, much sought-after for his model engines. It was a musical household: Wood senior was an amateur cellist and sang as principal tenor
in the choir of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
, known as "the musicians' church". His wife played the piano and sang songs from her native Wales. They encouraged their son's interest in music, buying him a Broadwood
piano, on which his mother gave him lessons. The young Wood also learned to play the violin and viola.
Wood received little religious inspiration at St Sepulchre, but was deeply stirred by the playing of the resident organist, George Cooper
, who allowed him into the organ loft and gave him his first lessons on the instrument. Cooper died when Wood was seven, and the boy took further lessons from Cooper's successor, Edwin M. Lott, for whom Wood had much less regard. At the age of ten, through the influence of one of his uncles, Wood made his first paid appearance as an organist at St Mary Aldermanbury
, being paid half a crown
. In June 1883, visiting the Fisheries Exhibition at South Kensington with his father, Wood was invited to play the organ in one of the galleries, making a good enough impression to be engaged to give recitals at the exhibition building over the next three months. At this time in his life, painting was nearly as strong an interest as music, and he studied in his spare time at the Slade School of Fine Art
. He remained a life-long amateur painter.
After taking private lessons from the musicologist Ebenezer Prout
, Wood entered the Royal Academy of Music
at the age of seventeen, studying harmony and composition with Prout, organ with Charles Steggall, and piano with Walter Macfarren. It is not clear whether he was a member of Manuel Garcia
's singing class, but it is certain that he became its accompanist and was greatly influenced by Garcia. Wood also accompanied the opera class, taught by Garcia's son Gustave
. Wood's ambition at the time was to become a teacher of singing, and he gave singing lessons throughout his life. He attended the classes of as many singing teachers as he could, although by his own account, "I possess a terrible voice. Garcia said it would go through a brick wall. In fact, a real conductor's voice."
. According to his memoirs, he worked in that capacity for Richard D'Oyly Carte
during the rehearsals for the first production of The Yeomen of the Guard
at the Savoy Theatre
in 1888. His biographer Arthur Jacobs
doubts this and discounts exchanges Wood purported to have had with Sir Arthur Sullivan
about the score. Jacobs describes Wood's memoirs as "vivacious in style but factually unreliable".
It is certain, however, that Wood was répétiteur at Carte's Royal English Opera House
for Sullivan's grand opera
Ivanhoe
in late 1890 and early 1891, and for André Messager
's La Basoche
in 1891–92. He also worked for Carte at the Savoy as assistant to François Cellier
on The Nautch Girl
in 1891. Wood remained devoted to Sullivan's music and later insisted on programming his concert works when they were out of fashion in musical circles. During this period, he had several compositions of his own performed, including an oratorio
, St. Dorothea (1889), a light opera, Daisy (1890), and a one-act comic opera, Returning the Compliment (1890).
Wood recalled that his first professional appearance as a conductor was at a choral concert in December 1887. Ad hoc engagements of this kind were commonplace for organists, but they brought little prestige such as was given to British conductor-composers such as Sullivan, Charles Villiers Stanford
and Alexander Mackenzie, or the rising generation of German star conductors led by Hans Richter
and Arthur Nikisch
. His first sustained work as a conductor was his 1889 appointment as musical director of a small touring opera ensemble, the Arthur Rouseby English Touring Opera. The company was not of a high standard, with an orchestra of only six players augmented by local recruits at each tour venue. Wood eventually negotiated a release from his contract, and after a brief return to teaching he secured a better appointment as conductor for the Carl Rosa Opera Company
in 1891. For that company he conducted Carmen
, The Bohemian Girl
, The Daughter of the Regiment, Maritana
, and Il trovatore
. This appointment was followed by a similar engagement with a company set up by former Carl Rosa singers.
When Signor Lago, formerly impresario of the Imperial Opera Company of St. Petersburg, was looking for a second conductor to work with Luigi Arditi
for a proposed London season, Garcia recommended Wood. The season opened at the newly rebuilt Olympic Theatre
in London, in October 1892, with Wood conducting the British premiere of Tchaikovsky
's Eugene Onegin
. At that time the operatic conductor was not seen as an important figure, but the critics who chose to mention the conducting gave Wood good reviews. The work was not popular with the public, and the season was cut short when Lago absconded, leaving the company unpaid. Before that debacle, Wood had also conducted performances of Maritana
and rehearsed Oberon
and Der Freischütz
. After the collapse of the Olympic opera season, Wood returned once more to his singing tuition. With the exception of a season at the Opera Comique
in 1896, Wood's subsequent conducting career was in the concert hall.
where he met the conductor Felix Mottl
, who subsequently appointed him as his assistant and chorus master for a series of Wagner concerts at the newly built Queen's Hall
in London. The manager of the hall, Robert Newman
, was proposing to run a ten-week season of promenade concerts and, impressed by Wood, invited him to conduct. There had been such concerts in London since 1838, under conductors from Louis Antoine Jullien
to Arthur Sullivan. Sullivan's concerts in the 1870s had been particularly successful, because he offered his audiences something more than the usual light music. He introduced major classical works, such as Beethoven
symphonies, normally restricted to the more expensive concerts presented by the Philharmonic Society
and others. Newman aimed to do the same: "I am going to run nightly concerts and train the public by easy stages. Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music."
Newman's determination to make the promenade concerts attractive to everyone led him to permit smoking during concerts, which was not formally prohibited at the Proms until 1971. Refreshments were available in all parts of the hall throughout the concerts, not only during intervals. Prices were considerably lower than those customarily charged for classical concerts: the promenade (the standing area) was one shilling, the balcony two shillings, and the grand circle (reserved seats) three and five shillings.
Newman needed to find financial backing for his first season. Dr George Cathcart, a wealthy ear, nose and throat
specialist, offered to sponsor it on two conditions: that Wood should conduct every concert, and that the pitch of the orchestral instruments should be lowered to the European standard diapason normal. Concert pitch in England was nearly a semitone
higher than that used on the continent, and Cathcart regarded it as damaging for singers' voices. Wood, from his experience as a singing teacher, agreed. As members of Wood's brass and woodwind sections were unwilling to buy new low-pitched instruments, Cathcart imported a set from Belgium and lent them to the players. After a season, the players recognised that the low pitch would be permanently adopted, and they bought the instruments from him.
On 10 August 1895, the first of the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts took place. Among those present who later recalled the opening was the singer Agnes Nicholls
:
The rest of the programme comprised, in the words of an historian of the Proms, David Cox, "for the most part ... blatant trivialities." Within days, however, Wood was shifting the balance from light music to mainstream classical works, with Schubert
's Unfinished Symphony
and further excerpts from Wagner operas. Among the other symphonies Wood conducted during the first season were Schubert
's Great C Major
, Mendelssohn
's Italian
and Schumann
's Fourth
. The concertos included Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto
and Schumann's Piano Concerto
. During the season Wood presented 23 novelties, including the London premieres of pieces by Richard Strauss
, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov
, Massenet
and Rimsky-Korsakov
. Newman and Wood soon felt able to devote every Monday night of the season principally to Wagner and every Friday night to Beethoven, a pattern that endured for decades.
The income from the concerts did not permit generous rehearsal time. Wood had nine hours to rehearse all the music for each week's six concerts. To gain the best results on so little rehearsal, Wood developed two facets of his conducting that remained his trademark throughout his career. First, he bought sets of the orchestral parts and marked them all with minutely detailed instructions to the players; secondly he developed a clear and expressive conducting technique. An orchestral cellist wrote that "if you watched him, you couldn't come in wrong." The violist Bernard Shore wrote, "You may be reading at sight in public, but you can't possibly go wrong with that stick in front of you". Thirty-five years after Wood's death, André Previn
recounted a story by one of his players who recalled that Wood "had everything planned out and timed to the minute ... at 10 a.m. precisely his baton went down. You learned things so thoroughly with him, but in the most economical time."
Another feature of Wood's conducting was his insistence on accurate tuning; before each rehearsal and concert he would check the instrument of each member of the woodwind and string sections against a tuning fork. He persisted in this practice until 1937, when the excellence of the BBC Symphony Orchestra
persuaded him that it was no longer necessary. To improve ensemble
, Wood experimented with the layout of the orchestra. His preferred layout was to have the first and second violins grouped together on his left, with the cellos to his right, a layout that has since become common.
Between the first and second season of promenade concerts, Wood did his last work in the opera house, conducting Stanford's new opera Shamus O'Brien at the Opera Comique
. It ran from March until July 1896, leaving Wood enough time to prepare the second Queen's Hall season, which began at the end of August. The season was so successful that Newman followed it with a winter season of Saturday night promenade concerts, but despite being popular they were not a financial success, and were not repeated in later years. In January 1897 Wood took on the direction of the Queen's Hall's prestigious Saturday afternoon symphony concerts. He continually presented new works by composers of many nationalities, and was particularly known for his skill in Russian music. Sullivan wrote to him in 1898, "I have never heard a finer performance in England than that of the Tchaikovsky symphony under your direction last Wednesday". Seventy-five years later, Sir Adrian Boult
ranked Wood as one of the two greatest Tchaikovsky conductors in his long experience. Wood also successfully challenged the widespread belief that Englishmen were not capable of conducting Wagner. When Wood and the Queen's Hall Orchestra performed at Windsor Castle
in November 1898, Queen Victoria
chose Tchaikovsky and Wagner for the programme. Wood, who modelled his appearance on Nikisch, took it as a compliment that the queen said to him, "Tell me, Mr Wood, are you quite English?"
In 1898, Wood married one of his singing pupils, Olga Michailoff, a divorcée a few months his senior. Jacobs describes it as "a marriage of perfect professional and private harmony". As a singer, with Wood as her accompanist, she won praise from the critics.
, a banker of German origin. Speyer put up the necessary funds, retained Newman as manager of the concerts, and encouraged him and Wood to continue with their project of improving the public's taste. At the beginning of 1902, Wood accepted the conductorship of that year's Sheffield
triennial festival. He continued to be associated with that festival until 1936, changing its emphasis from choral to orchestral pieces. A German critic, reviewing the festival for a Berlin publication, wrote, "Two personalities now represent a new epoch in English musical life – Edward Elgar
as composer, and Henry J. Wood as conductor." Later in the year, overtaxed by his enormous workload, Wood's health broke down. Even though this was during the Proms season, Cathcart insisted that Wood should have a complete break and change of scene. Leaving the leader of the orchestra, Arthur Payne, to conduct during his absence, Wood and his wife took a cruise to Morocco, missing the Proms concerts from 13 October to 8 November.
In the early years of the Proms there were complaints in some musical journals that Wood was neglecting British music. In 1899 Newman unsuccessfully attempted to secure for Wood the premiere of Elgar's Enigma Variations
, but in the same year Newman passed up the opportunity to introduce the music of Delius
to London concertgoers. By the end of the first decade of the new century, however, Wood's reputation in conducting British music was in no doubt; he gave the world, British or London premieres of more than a hundred British works between 1900 and 1910. Meanwhile, he introduced his audiences to many European composers. In the 1903 season, he programmed symphonies by Bruckner
(No. 7
), Sibelius
(No. 1
), and Mahler
(No. 1
). In the same year, he introduced several of Richard Strauss's tone poems to London, and in 1905 he gave Strauss's Symphonia Domestica
. This prompted the composer to write, "I cannot leave London without an expression of admiration for the splendid Orchestra which Henry Wood's master hand has created in such a short time."
Creating the orchestra admired by Strauss had not been achieved without a struggle. In 1904, Wood and Newman tackled the deputy system, in which orchestral players, if offered a better-paid engagement, could send a substitute to a rehearsal or a concert. The treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society described it thus: "A, whom you want, signs to play at your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to the first rehearsal. B, without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D, whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away." After a rehearsal in which Wood was faced with a sea of entirely unfamiliar faces in his own orchestra, Newman came on the platform to announce: "Gentlemen, in future there will be no deputies; good morning." Forty players resigned en bloc and formed their own orchestra: the London Symphony Orchestra
. Wood bore no grudge and attended their first concert, although it was 12 years before he agreed to conduct the orchestra.
Wood had great sympathy for rank-and-file orchestral players and strove for improvements in their pay. He sought to raise their status and was the first British conductor to insist that the orchestra should stand to acknowledge applause along with the conductor. He introduced women into the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1913. He said, "I do not like ladies playing the trombone or double bass, but they can play the violin, and they do." By 1918 Wood had 14 women in his orchestra.
Wood conducted his own compositions and arrangements from time to time. He gave his Fantasia on Welsh Melodies and Fantasia on Scottish Melodies on successive nights in 1909. He composed the work for which he is most celebrated, Fantasia on British Sea Songs
, for a concert in 1905, celebrating the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar
. It caught the public fancy immediately, with its mixture of sea-shanties, together with Handel
's "See the Conquering Hero Comes" and Arne's "Rule, Britannia!". He played it at the Proms more than 40 times, and it became a fixture at the "Last Night of the Proms", the lively concert marking the end of each season. It remained so under his successors, though often rearranged, notably by Sir Malcolm Sargent
. A highlight of the Fantasia is the hornpipe
("Jack's the Lad"); Wood said of it:
Among Wood's other works was his Purcell Suite, incorporating themes from Purcell
's stage works and string sonatas, which Wood performed at an orchestral festival in Zurich in 1921, and orchestral transcriptions of works by a range of composers from Albéniz
to Vivaldi
.
Wood worked with his wife for many concerts, and was her piano accompanist at her recitals. In 1906, at the Norwich
music festival he presented Beethoven's Choral
Symphony and Bach
's St Matthew Passion, with his wife among the singers. In December 1909, after a short illness, Olga Wood died. Cathcart took Wood away to take his mind off his loss. On his return, Wood resumed his professional routine, with the exception that, after Olga's death, he rarely performed as piano accompanist for anyone else; his skill in that art was greatly missed by the critics. In June 1911, he married his secretary, Muriel Ellen Greatrex (1882–1967), with whom he had two daughters. In the same year he accepted a knighthood
, and declined the conductorship of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in succession to Mahler, as he felt it his duty to devote himself to the British public.
Throughout the early part of the century, Wood was influential in changing the habits of concertgoers. Until then it had been customary for audiences at symphony or choral concerts to applaud after each movement or section. Wood discouraged this, sometime by gesture and sometimes by specific request printed in programmes. For this he was much praised in the musical and national press. In addition to his work at the Queen's Hall, Wood conducted at the Sheffield, Norwich, Birmingham, Wolverhampton
, and Westmorland
festivals, and at orchestral concerts in Cardiff
, Manchester
, Liverpool
, Leicester
and Hull
. His programming was summarised in The Manchester Guardian, which listed the number of each composer's works played in the 1911 Proms season; the top ten were: Wagner (121); Beethoven (34); Tchaikovsky (30); Mozart
(28); Dvořák
(16); Weber
(16); J. S. Bach (14); Brahms
(14); Elgar (14); and Liszt
(13).
The 1912 and 1913 Prom seasons are singled out by Cox as among the finest of this part of Wood's career. Among those conducting their own works or hearing Wood conduct them were Strauss, Debussy
, Reger
, Scriabin
, Rachmaninoff
and Schoenberg
. Rehearsing Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, Wood urged his players, "Stick to it, gentlemen! This is nothing to what you'll have to play in 25 years' time". The critic Ernest Newman
wrote: "It is not often that an English audience hisses the music it does not like, but a good third of the people at Queen's Hall last Tuesday permitted themselves that luxury after the performance of the five orchestral pieces of Schoenberg. Another third of the audience was only not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss; so that on the whole it does not look as if Schoenberg has so far made many friends in London." The composer was delighted with the performance and congratulated Wood and the orchestra warmly: "I must say it was the first time since Gustav Mahler that I heard such music played again as a musician of culture demands." Wood programmed the work again in 1914, when it was much more warmly received.
, Stravinsky
and Debussy
. An historian of the Proms, Ateş Orga, wrote, "Concerts often had to be re-timed to coincide with the 'All Clear' between air raids. Falling bombs, shrapnel, anti-aircraft fire and the droning of Zeppelins were ever threatening. But [Wood] kept things on the go and in the end had a very real part to play in boosting morale."
Towards the end of the war, Wood received an offer by which he was seriously tempted: the Boston Symphony Orchestra
invited him to become its musical director. He had been guest conductor of the Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, but he regarded the Boston orchestra as the finest in the world. Nonetheless, as he told Boult, "it was hard to refuse, but I felt it was a patriotic duty to remain in my own country, at the present moment."
After the war, the Proms continued much as before. The second halves of concerts still featured piano-accompanied songs rather than serious classical music. Chappell's, having taken over sponsorship of the Proms and spent £35,000 keeping the Queen's Hall going during the war, wished to promote songs published by the company. The management of Chappell's were also less enthusiastic than Wood and Newman about promoting new orchestral works, most of which were not profitable.
In 1921 Wood was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first English conductor to receive the honour. By now he was beginning to find his position as Britain's leading conductor under challenge from rising younger rivals. Thomas Beecham
had been an increasingly influential figure since about 1910. He and Wood did not like one another, and each avoided mention of the other in his memoirs. Adrian Boult, who, at Wood's recommendation, took over some of his responsibilities at Birmingham in 1923, always admired and respected Wood. Other younger conductors included men who had been members of Wood's orchestra, including Basil Cameron
and Eugene Goossens
. Another protégé of Wood was Malcolm Sargent
, who appeared at the Proms as a composer-conductor in 1921 and 1922. Wood encouraged him to abandon thoughts of a career as a pianist and to concentrate on conducting. Wood further showed his interest in the future of music by taking on the conductorship of the student orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music in 1923, rehearsing it twice a week, whenever possible, for the next twenty years. In the same year, he accepted the conductorship of the amateur Hull Philharmonic Orchestra, travelling three times a year until 1939 to rehearse and conduct its concerts.
In 1925 Wood was invited to conduct four concerts for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl
. Such was their success, both artistic and financial, that Wood was invited back, and conducted again the following year. In addition to a large number of English pieces, Wood programmed works by composers as diverse as Bach and Stravinsky. He again conducted there in 1934.
The BBC regime brought immediate benefits. The use of the second half of concerts to promote Chappell's songs ceased, to be replaced by music chosen for its own excellence: on the first night under the BBC's control, the songs in the second half were by Schubert
, Quilter
and Parry
rather than ballads from Chappell's. For Wood, the greatest benefit was that the BBC gave him twice as much rehearsal time as he had previously enjoyed. He now had a daily rehearsal and extra rehearsals as needed. He was also allowed extra players when large scores called for them, instead of having to rescore the work for the forces available.
In 1929, Wood played a celebrated practical joke on musicologists and critics. "I got very fed up with them, always finding fault with any arrangement or orchestrations that I made ... 'spoiling the original' etc. etc.", and so Wood passed off his own orchestration of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor
, as a transcription by a Russian composer called Paul Klenovsky. In Wood's later account, the press and the BBC "fell into the trap and said the scoring was wonderful, Klenovsky had the real flare [sic] for true colour etc. – and performance after performance was given and asked for." Wood kept the secret for five years before revealing the truth. The press treated the deception as a great joke; The Times
entered into the spirit of it with a jocular tribute to the lamented Klenovsky.
As Wood's working life took a turn for the better, his domestic life started to deteriorate. During the early 1930s, he and his wife gradually became estranged, and their relationship ended in bitterness, with Muriel taking most of Wood's money and, for much of the time, living abroad. She refused to divorce him. The breach between Muriel and Wood also caused his estrangement from their daughters. In 1934 he began a happy relationship with a widowed former pupil, Jessie Linton, who had sung for him frequently in the past under her professional name of Jessie Goldsack. One of Wood's players recalled, "She changed him. He had been badly dressed, awful clothes. Jessie got him a new evening suit, instead of the mouldy green one, and he flourished yellow gloves and a cigar ... he became human." As Wood was not free to remarry, she changed her name by deed poll to "Lady Jessie Wood" and was generally assumed by the public to be Wood's wife. In his memoirs, Wood mentioned neither his second marriage nor his subsequent relationship.
In his later years, Wood came to be identified with the Proms rather than with the year-round concert season. Boult was appointed director of music at the BBC in 1930. In that capacity he strove to ensure that Wood was invited to conduct a fitting number of BBC symphony concerts outside the Prom season. The BBC chose Wood for important collaborations with Bartók and Paul Hindemith
, and for the first British performance of Mahler's vast Symphony No. 8
. But Jacobs notes that, in the general concert repertory, Wood now had to compete against well-known foreign conductors such as Bruno Walter
, Willem Mengelberg
, and Arturo Toscanini
, "in comparison with whom he was increasingly seen as a workhorse".
Requiem
, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
, Berlioz
' Te Deum
, Walton
's Belshazzar's Feast
, and, in the presence of the composer, Rachmaninoff's The Bells. The following year, Wood began planning for a grand concert to mark his fiftieth year as a conductor. The Royal Albert Hall
was chosen as the venue, having a far larger capacity than the Queen's Hall. The concert was given on 5 October 1938. Rachmaninoff played the solo part in his Second Piano Concerto
, and Vaughan Williams
, at Wood's request, composed a short choral work for the occasion: the Serenade to Music
for orchestra and 16 soloists. The other composers represented in the programme were Sullivan, Beethoven, Bach, Bax
, Wagner, Handel and Elgar. The orchestra comprised players from the three London orchestras: the London Symphony, London Philharmonic
and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The concert raised £9,000 for Wood's chosen charity, providing health care for musicians. In the same year, Wood published his autobiography, My Life of Music.
On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the BBC immediately put into effect its contingency plans to move much of its broadcasting away from London to places thought less susceptible to bombing. Its musical activities, including the orchestra, moved to Bristol. The BBC withdrew not only the players, but financial support from the Proms. Wood determined that the 1940 season would nevertheless go ahead. The Royal Philharmonic Society and a private entrepreneur, Keith Douglas, agreed to back an eight-week season, and the London Symphony Orchestra was engaged. The season was curtailed after four weeks, when intense bombing forced the Queen's Hall to close. The last Prom given at the Queen's Hall was on 7 September 1940. In May 1941, the hall was destroyed by bombs.
It was immediately agreed that the 1941 season of Proms should be held at the Albert Hall. It was twice the size of the Queen's Hall, with poor acoustics, but a six-week series was judged a success, and the Albert Hall remained the home of the Proms. Wood, aged seventy-two, was persuaded to have an associate conductor to relieve him of some of the burden. Basil Cameron
undertook the task and remained a Prom conductor until his retirement, aged eighty, in 1964. The BBC brought its symphony orchestra back to London and resumed its backing of the Proms in 1942; Boult joined Cameron as Wood's associate conductor during that season. In early 1943, Wood's health deteriorated, and two days after the start of that year's season, he collapsed and was ordered to have a month in bed. Despite wartime vicissitudes, the 1943 season sold nearly 250,000 tickets, with an average audience of about 4,000 – many more than could have fitted into the Queen's Hall.
Despite his age and the difficulties of wartime travel, Wood insisted on going to provincial cities to conduct – as much, according to Jacobs, to help the local orchestras survive as to gratify audiences. His final season was in 1944. The season began well with Wood in good form, but after three weeks raids by the devastating new German flying bombs caused the government to order the closure of places of entertainment. The Proms were immediately relocated to Bedford
some 50 miles (80.5 km) away, where Wood continued to conduct. He was taken ill in early August and was unable to conduct the fiftieth anniversary Prom on 10 August; he was forbidden by his doctor even to listen to its broadcast. Wood died just over a week later on 19 August at Hitchin Hospital in Hitchin
, Hertfordshire
; his funeral service was held in the town at St Mary's church, and his ashes were interred in the Musicians' Chapel of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
.
or HMV. They made eight other records together for HMV over the next two years. After Olga's death, Wood signed a contract with HMV's rival, Columbia
, for whom he made a series of discs between 1915 and 1917 with the singer Clara Butt
, including excerpts from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius
. Between 1915 and 1925 he conducted 65 recordings for Columbia using the early acoustic recording process, including many discs of Wagner excerpts and a truncated version of Elgar's Violin Concerto
with Albert Sammons
as soloist. When the microphone and electrical recording were introduced in 1925, Wood re-recorded the Elgar concerto, with Sammons, and made 36 other discs for Columbia over the next nine years. The 1929 recording of the Elgar concerto has been reissued on compact disc and is well regarded by some critics.
Wood was wooed from Columbia by the young Decca
company in 1935. For Decca he conducted 23 recordings over the next two years, including Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
, Elgar's Enigma Variations
and Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony
. In 1938 he returned to Columbia, for whom his five new recordings included the Serenade to Music with the 16 original singers, a few days after the premiere, and his own Fantasia on British Sea Songs.
Wood's recordings did not remain in the catalogues long after his death. The Record Guide
, 1956, lists none of his records. A few of his recordings have subsequently been reissued on compact disc, including the Decca and Columbia Vaughan Williams recordings from 1936 and 1938.
's Piano Concerto; Delius's A Song Before Sunrise, A Song of Summer
, and Idyll; Elgar's The Wand of Youth Suite No. 1, Sospiri and the 4th and 5th Pomp and Circumstance Marches
; and Vaughan Williams
's Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1, Flos Campi
and Serenade to Music.
Wood's UK premieres included Bartók's Dance Suite; Chabrier
's Joyeuse Marche; Copland
's Billy the Kid
; Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
and Ibéria
; Hindemith
's Kammermusik 2 and 5; Janáček
's Sinfonietta
, Taras Bulba
and Glagolitic Mass
; Kodály
's Dances from Galanta; Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 4
, 7
and 8
, and Das Lied von der Erde
; Prokofiev
's Piano Concerto No. 1
and Violin Concerto No. 2
; Rachmaninoff
's Piano Concerto No 1
; Ravel
's Ma Mère l'Oie, Rapsodie espagnole
, La Valse
and Piano Concerto in D
; Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol
, Scheherazade
, and Symphony No. 2; Saint-Saëns
's The Carnival of the Animals
; Schumann's Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra; Shostakovich
's Piano Concerto No. 1
and Symphonies Nos. 7
and 8
; Sibelius's Symphonies Nos. 1
, 6
and 7
, Violin Concerto
, Karelia Suite
, and Tapiola
; Richard Strauss's Symphonia Domestica
; Stravinsky's The Firebird
(suite); Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony
and Nutcracker Suite
; and Webern
's Passacaglia.
(Belgium; 1920), and Officer of the Legion of Honour (France; 1926). He received honorary doctorates from five English universities and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Music (1920) and the Royal College of Music
(1923).
Jacobs lists 26 compositions dedicated to Wood, including, in addition to the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, works by Elgar, Delius, Bax, Marcel Dupré
, and William Walton
. The poet laureate
, John Masefield
, composed a poem of six verses in his honour, entitled "Sir Henry Wood", often referred to by its first line, "Where does the uttered music go?". Walton set it to music as an anthem for mixed choir; it received its first performance on 26 April 1946 at St Sepulchre's, on the occasion of a ceremony unveiling a memorial stained-glass window in Wood's honour.
Wood is commemorated in the name of the Henry Wood Hall, the deconsecrated Holy Trinity Church in Southwark
, which was converted to a rehearsal and recording venue in 1975. His bust stands upstage centre in the Royal Albert Hall during the whole of each Prom season, decorated by a chaplet
on the Last Night of the Proms. His collection of 2,800 orchestral scores and 1,920 sets of parts is now in the library of the Royal Academy of Music. For the Academy he also established the Henry Wood Fund, giving financial aid to students. The University of Strathclyde
named a building at its Jordanhill campus
after him. His best-known memorial is the Proms, officially "the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", but universally referred to by the informal short version.
His biographer Arthur Jacobs wrote of Wood:
Promenade concert
See The PromsAlthough the term Promenade Concert is normally associated today with the series of concerts founded in 1895 by Robert Newman and the conductor Henry Wood – a festival known today as the BBC Proms – the term originally referred to concerts in the pleasure gardens of London where the...
s, known as the Proms
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
Born in modest circumstances to parents who encouraged his musical talent, Wood started his career as an organist. During his studies at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
, he came under the influence of the voice teacher Manuel Garcia
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García , was a Spanish singer, music educator, and vocal pedagogue.-Biography:García was born on 17 March 1805 in the town of Zafra in Badajoz Province, Spain. His father was singer and teacher Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodriguez García...
and became his accompanist. After similar work for Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
's opera companies on the works of Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
and others, Wood became the conductor of a small operatic touring company. He was soon engaged by the larger Carl Rosa Opera Company
Carl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...
. One notable event in his operatic career was conducting the British premiere of Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
in 1892.
From the mid-1890s until his death, Wood focused on concert conducting. He was engaged by the impresario Robert Newman
Robert Newman (impresario)
Robert Newman was an English businessman and musical impresario. He is most celebrated as the founder of the series of classical music concerts that are now known as The Proms....
to conduct a series of promenade concerts at the Queen's Hall
Queen's Hall
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...
, offering a mixture of classical and popular music at low prices. The series was successful, and Wood conducted annual promenade series until his death in 1944. By the 1920s, Wood had steered the repertoire entirely to classical music. When the Queen's Hall was destroyed by bombing in 1941, the Proms moved to the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
.
Wood declined the chief conductorships of the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
and Boston Symphony Orchestras, believing it his duty to serve music in the United Kingdom. In addition to the Proms, he conducted concerts and festivals throughout the country and also trained the student orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music. He had an enormous influence on the musical life of Britain over his long career: he and Newman greatly improved access to classical music, and Wood raised the standard of orchestral playing and nurtured the taste of the public, presenting a vast repertoire of music spanning four centuries.
Early years
Wood was born in Oxford StreetOxford Street
Oxford Street is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, United Kingdom. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, as well as its most dense, and currently has approximately 300 shops. The street was formerly part of the London-Oxford road which began at Newgate,...
, London, the only child of Henry Joseph Wood and his wife Martha, née Morris. Wood senior had started in his family's pawnbroking
Pawnbroker
A pawnbroker is an individual or business that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral...
business, but by the time of his son's birth he was trading as a jeweller, optician and engineering modeller, much sought-after for his model engines. It was a musical household: Wood senior was an amateur cellist and sang as principal tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
in the choir of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
, known as "the musicians' church". His wife played the piano and sang songs from her native Wales. They encouraged their son's interest in music, buying him a Broadwood
Broadwood and Sons
Broadwood and Sons is an English piano manufacturer, founded in 1728 by Burkat Shudi and continued after his death in 1773 by John Broadwood.- Early history :...
piano, on which his mother gave him lessons. The young Wood also learned to play the violin and viola.
Wood received little religious inspiration at St Sepulchre, but was deeply stirred by the playing of the resident organist, George Cooper
George Cooper (organist)
George Cooper was an English organist and music educator. Born in Lambeth, Cooper was the son of organist George Cooper, Sr. He succeeded his father as assistant organist at St Paul's Cathedral in 1838; having already substituted for his father periodically since 1831...
, who allowed him into the organ loft and gave him his first lessons on the instrument. Cooper died when Wood was seven, and the boy took further lessons from Cooper's successor, Edwin M. Lott, for whom Wood had much less regard. At the age of ten, through the influence of one of his uncles, Wood made his first paid appearance as an organist at St Mary Aldermanbury
St Mary Aldermanbury
St Mary Aldermanbury church in the City of London, is first mentioned in 1181 but was destroyed by the Great fire of London in 1666. Rebuilt in Portland stone by Sir Christopher Wren, it was again gutted by the Blitz in 1940, leaving only the walls...
, being paid half a crown
Half crown (British coin)
The half crown was a denomination of British money worth half of a crown, equivalent to two and a half shillings , or one-eighth of a pound. The half crown was first issued in 1549, in the reign of Edward VI...
. In June 1883, visiting the Fisheries Exhibition at South Kensington with his father, Wood was invited to play the organ in one of the galleries, making a good enough impression to be engaged to give recitals at the exhibition building over the next three months. At this time in his life, painting was nearly as strong an interest as music, and he studied in his spare time at the Slade School of Fine Art
Slade School of Fine Art
The Slade School of Fine Art is a world-renownedart school in London, United Kingdom, and a department of University College London...
. He remained a life-long amateur painter.
After taking private lessons from the musicologist Ebenezer Prout
Ebenezer Prout
Ebenezer Prout , was an English musical theorist, writer, teacher and composer, whose instruction, afterwards embodied in a series of standard works, underpinned the work of many British musicians of succeeding generations....
, Wood entered the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
at the age of seventeen, studying harmony and composition with Prout, organ with Charles Steggall, and piano with Walter Macfarren. It is not clear whether he was a member of Manuel Garcia
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García , was a Spanish singer, music educator, and vocal pedagogue.-Biography:García was born on 17 March 1805 in the town of Zafra in Badajoz Province, Spain. His father was singer and teacher Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodriguez García...
's singing class, but it is certain that he became its accompanist and was greatly influenced by Garcia. Wood also accompanied the opera class, taught by Garcia's son Gustave
Gustave Garcia
Gustave Garcia was an Italian baritone opera singer and singing teacher.-Biography:He was born on February 1, 1837 in Milan, Italy to Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García and soprano Eugénie Mayer...
. Wood's ambition at the time was to become a teacher of singing, and he gave singing lessons throughout his life. He attended the classes of as many singing teachers as he could, although by his own account, "I possess a terrible voice. Garcia said it would go through a brick wall. In fact, a real conductor's voice."
Opera
On leaving the Royal Academy of Music in 1888, Wood taught singing privately and was soon very successful, attracting "more singing pupils than I could comfortably deal with" at half a guinea an hour. He also worked as a répétiteurRépétiteur
Répétiteur , repetitore , or Korrepetitor / Repetitor , originally from the French verb répéter meaning "to repeat, to go over, to learn, to rehearse"....
. According to his memoirs, he worked in that capacity for Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
during the rehearsals for the first production of The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in 1888. His biographer Arthur Jacobs
Arthur Jacobs
Arthur David Jacobs was an English music critic, musicologist, teacher, librettist and translator. Among his many books, two of the best known are his Penguin Dictionary of Music, which was reprinted in several editions between 1958 and 1996, and his biography of Arthur Sullivan, which was praised...
doubts this and discounts exchanges Wood purported to have had with Sir Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
about the score. Jacobs describes Wood's memoirs as "vivacious in style but factually unreliable".
It is certain, however, that Wood was répétiteur at Carte's Royal English Opera House
Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. It is an imposing red-brick building that dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus and is located near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road...
for Sullivan's grand opera
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe (opera)
Ivanhoe is a romantic opera in three acts based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott, with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Julian Sturgis. It premiered at the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891 for a consecutive run of 155 performances, unheard of for a grand opera...
in late 1890 and early 1891, and for André Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
's La Basoche
La Basoche
La Basoche is an opéra comique in three acts of 1890, with music by André Messager and a French libretto by Albert Carré.-History:Messager's 1889 opérette Le mari de la reine at Bouffes-Parisiens was a disappointment, and the composer and his wife were struggling to afford even basic necessities...
in 1891–92. He also worked for Carte at the Savoy as assistant to François Cellier
François Cellier
François Arsène Cellier , often called Frank, was an English conductor and composer. He is best known for his tenure as music director and conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company during the original runs and early revivals of the Savoy operas.-Life and career:Cellier was born in South Hackney,...
on The Nautch Girl
The Nautch Girl
thumb|right|250px|Solomon , with Gilbert and Sullivan irate at his success at the SavoyThe Nautch Girl, or, The Rajah of Chutneypore is a comic opera in two acts, with a book by George Dance, lyrics by Dance and Frank Desprez and music by Edward Solomon...
in 1891. Wood remained devoted to Sullivan's music and later insisted on programming his concert works when they were out of fashion in musical circles. During this period, he had several compositions of his own performed, including an oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
, St. Dorothea (1889), a light opera, Daisy (1890), and a one-act comic opera, Returning the Compliment (1890).
Wood recalled that his first professional appearance as a conductor was at a choral concert in December 1887. Ad hoc engagements of this kind were commonplace for organists, but they brought little prestige such as was given to British conductor-composers such as Sullivan, Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
and Alexander Mackenzie, or the rising generation of German star conductors led by Hans Richter
Hans Richter (conductor)
Hans Richter was an Austrian orchestral and operatic conductor.-Biography:Richter was born in Raab , Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire. His mother was opera-singer Jozsefa Csazenszky. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory...
and Arthur Nikisch
Arthur Nikisch
Arthur Nikisch ; 12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London and - most importantly - Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt...
. His first sustained work as a conductor was his 1889 appointment as musical director of a small touring opera ensemble, the Arthur Rouseby English Touring Opera. The company was not of a high standard, with an orchestra of only six players augmented by local recruits at each tour venue. Wood eventually negotiated a release from his contract, and after a brief return to teaching he secured a better appointment as conductor for the Carl Rosa Opera Company
Carl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...
in 1891. For that company he conducted Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, The Bohemian Girl
The Bohemian Girl
The Bohemian Girl is an opera composed by Michael William Balfe with a libretto by Alfred Bunn. The plot is loosely based on a Cervantes tale, La Gitanilla.The opera was first produced in London at the Drury Lane Theatre on November 27, 1843...
, The Daughter of the Regiment, Maritana
Maritana
Maritana is a grand opera in three acts composed by William Vincent Wallace, with a libretto by Edward Fitzball . The opera is based on the play Don César de Bazan by Adolphe d'Ennery and Philippe François Pinel Dumanoir , which was also the source material for Jules Massenet's opéra comique Don...
, and Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
. This appointment was followed by a similar engagement with a company set up by former Carl Rosa singers.
When Signor Lago, formerly impresario of the Imperial Opera Company of St. Petersburg, was looking for a second conductor to work with Luigi Arditi
Luigi Arditi
Luigi Arditi was an Italian violinist, composer and conductor.Arditi was born in Crescentino, Piemonte . He began his musical career as a violinist, and studied music at the Conservatory of Milan. He made his debut in 1843 as a director at Vercelli, and it was there that he was made an honorary...
for a proposed London season, Garcia recommended Wood. The season opened at the newly rebuilt Olympic Theatre
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
in London, in October 1892, with Wood conducting the British premiere of Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
. At that time the operatic conductor was not seen as an important figure, but the critics who chose to mention the conducting gave Wood good reviews. The work was not popular with the public, and the season was cut short when Lago absconded, leaving the company unpaid. Before that debacle, Wood had also conducted performances of Maritana
Maritana
Maritana is a grand opera in three acts composed by William Vincent Wallace, with a libretto by Edward Fitzball . The opera is based on the play Don César de Bazan by Adolphe d'Ennery and Philippe François Pinel Dumanoir , which was also the source material for Jules Massenet's opéra comique Don...
and rehearsed Oberon
Oberon (opera)
Oberon, or The Elf King's Oath is a 3-act romantic opera in English with spoken dialogue and music by Carl Maria von Weber. The libretto by James Robinson Planche was based on a German poem, Oberon, by Christoph Martin Wieland, which itself was based on the epic romance Huon de Bordeaux, a French...
and Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
. After the collapse of the Olympic opera season, Wood returned once more to his singing tuition. With the exception of a season at the Opera Comique
Opera Comique
The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, between Wych Street and Holywell Street with entrances on the East Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway...
in 1896, Wood's subsequent conducting career was in the concert hall.
Early years of the Proms
In 1894 Wood went to the Wagner festival at BayreuthBayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
where he met the conductor Felix Mottl
Felix Mottl
Felix Josef von Mottl was an Austrian conductor and composer. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant conductors of his day. He composed three operas, of which Agnes Bernauer was the most successful, as well as a string quartet and numerous songs and other music...
, who subsequently appointed him as his assistant and chorus master for a series of Wagner concerts at the newly built Queen's Hall
Queen's Hall
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...
in London. The manager of the hall, Robert Newman
Robert Newman (impresario)
Robert Newman was an English businessman and musical impresario. He is most celebrated as the founder of the series of classical music concerts that are now known as The Proms....
, was proposing to run a ten-week season of promenade concerts and, impressed by Wood, invited him to conduct. There had been such concerts in London since 1838, under conductors from Louis Antoine Jullien
Louis Antoine Jullien
Louis Antoine Jullien was a French conductor and composer of light music.Jullien was born in Sisteron, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and was baptised Louis George Maurice Adolphe Roche Albert Abel Antonio Alexandre Noë Jean Lucien Daniel Eugène Joseph-le-brun Joseph-Barême Thomas Thomas Thomas-Thomas...
to Arthur Sullivan. Sullivan's concerts in the 1870s had been particularly successful, because he offered his audiences something more than the usual light music. He introduced major classical works, such as Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
symphonies, normally restricted to the more expensive concerts presented by the Philharmonic Society
Royal Philharmonic Society
The Royal Philharmonic Society is a British music society, formed in 1813. It was originally formed in London to promote performances of instrumental music there. Many distinguished composers and performers have taken part in its concerts...
and others. Newman aimed to do the same: "I am going to run nightly concerts and train the public by easy stages. Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music."
Newman's determination to make the promenade concerts attractive to everyone led him to permit smoking during concerts, which was not formally prohibited at the Proms until 1971. Refreshments were available in all parts of the hall throughout the concerts, not only during intervals. Prices were considerably lower than those customarily charged for classical concerts: the promenade (the standing area) was one shilling, the balcony two shillings, and the grand circle (reserved seats) three and five shillings.
Newman needed to find financial backing for his first season. Dr George Cathcart, a wealthy ear, nose and throat
Otolaryngology
Otolaryngology or ENT is the branch of medicine and surgery that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of ear, nose, throat, and head and neck disorders....
specialist, offered to sponsor it on two conditions: that Wood should conduct every concert, and that the pitch of the orchestral instruments should be lowered to the European standard diapason normal. Concert pitch in England was nearly a semitone
Semitone
A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically....
higher than that used on the continent, and Cathcart regarded it as damaging for singers' voices. Wood, from his experience as a singing teacher, agreed. As members of Wood's brass and woodwind sections were unwilling to buy new low-pitched instruments, Cathcart imported a set from Belgium and lent them to the players. After a season, the players recognised that the low pitch would be permanently adopted, and they bought the instruments from him.
On 10 August 1895, the first of the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts took place. Among those present who later recalled the opening was the singer Agnes Nicholls
Agnes Nicholls
Agnes Nicholls was one of the greatest English sopranos of the 20th century, both in the concert hall and on the operatic stage....
:
Just before 8 o'clock I saw Henry Wood take up his position behind the curtain at the end of the platform – watch in hand. Punctually, on the stroke of eight, he walked quickly to the rostrum, buttonhole and all, and began the National Anthem ... A few moments for the audience to settle down, then the RienziRienziRienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name . The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi...
Overture, and the first concert of the new Promenades had begun.
The rest of the programme comprised, in the words of an historian of the Proms, David Cox, "for the most part ... blatant trivialities." Within days, however, Wood was shifting the balance from light music to mainstream classical works, with Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
's Unfinished Symphony
Symphony No. 8 (Schubert)
Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor , commonly known as the "Unfinished Symphony" , D.759, was started in 1822 but left with only two movements known to be complete, even though Schubert would live for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score but with only two pages...
and further excerpts from Wagner operas. Among the other symphonies Wood conducted during the first season were Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
's Great C Major
Symphony No. 9 (Schubert)
The Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, known as the Great , is the final symphony completed by Franz Schubert. Nicknamed The Great C major originally to distinguish it from his Symphony No...
, Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's Italian
Symphony No. 4 (Mendelssohn)
The Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, commonly known as the Italian, is an orchestral symphony written by German composer Felix Mendelssohn ....
and Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
's Fourth
Symphony No. 4 (Schumann)
The Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 120, composed by Robert Schumann, was completed in 1841 . Schumann heavily revised the symphony in 1851, and it was this version that reached publication....
. The concertos included Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn)
Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time...
and Schumann's Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto (Schumann)
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.54, is a famous Romantic concerto by Robert Schumann, completed in 1845.Schumann had begun several piano concerti before this one: In 1828, he had begun one in E-flat major; from 1829-31 he worked on one in F major, and in 1839, he wrote one movement of a concerto...
. During the season Wood presented 23 novelties, including the London premieres of pieces by Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...
, Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
and Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
. Newman and Wood soon felt able to devote every Monday night of the season principally to Wagner and every Friday night to Beethoven, a pattern that endured for decades.
The income from the concerts did not permit generous rehearsal time. Wood had nine hours to rehearse all the music for each week's six concerts. To gain the best results on so little rehearsal, Wood developed two facets of his conducting that remained his trademark throughout his career. First, he bought sets of the orchestral parts and marked them all with minutely detailed instructions to the players; secondly he developed a clear and expressive conducting technique. An orchestral cellist wrote that "if you watched him, you couldn't come in wrong." The violist Bernard Shore wrote, "You may be reading at sight in public, but you can't possibly go wrong with that stick in front of you". Thirty-five years after Wood's death, André Previn
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...
recounted a story by one of his players who recalled that Wood "had everything planned out and timed to the minute ... at 10 a.m. precisely his baton went down. You learned things so thoroughly with him, but in the most economical time."
Another feature of Wood's conducting was his insistence on accurate tuning; before each rehearsal and concert he would check the instrument of each member of the woodwind and string sections against a tuning fork. He persisted in this practice until 1937, when the excellence of the BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation and one of the leading orchestras in Britain.-History:...
persuaded him that it was no longer necessary. To improve ensemble
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
, Wood experimented with the layout of the orchestra. His preferred layout was to have the first and second violins grouped together on his left, with the cellos to his right, a layout that has since become common.
Between the first and second season of promenade concerts, Wood did his last work in the opera house, conducting Stanford's new opera Shamus O'Brien at the Opera Comique
Opera Comique
The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, between Wych Street and Holywell Street with entrances on the East Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway...
. It ran from March until July 1896, leaving Wood enough time to prepare the second Queen's Hall season, which began at the end of August. The season was so successful that Newman followed it with a winter season of Saturday night promenade concerts, but despite being popular they were not a financial success, and were not repeated in later years. In January 1897 Wood took on the direction of the Queen's Hall's prestigious Saturday afternoon symphony concerts. He continually presented new works by composers of many nationalities, and was particularly known for his skill in Russian music. Sullivan wrote to him in 1898, "I have never heard a finer performance in England than that of the Tchaikovsky symphony under your direction last Wednesday". Seventy-five years later, Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
ranked Wood as one of the two greatest Tchaikovsky conductors in his long experience. Wood also successfully challenged the widespread belief that Englishmen were not capable of conducting Wagner. When Wood and the Queen's Hall Orchestra performed at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
in November 1898, Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
chose Tchaikovsky and Wagner for the programme. Wood, who modelled his appearance on Nikisch, took it as a compliment that the queen said to him, "Tell me, Mr Wood, are you quite English?"
In 1898, Wood married one of his singing pupils, Olga Michailoff, a divorcée a few months his senior. Jacobs describes it as "a marriage of perfect professional and private harmony". As a singer, with Wood as her accompanist, she won praise from the critics.
Early 20th century
The promenade concerts flourished through the 1890s, but in 1902 Newman, who had been investing unwisely in theatrical presentations, found himself unable to bear the financial responsibility for the Queen's Hall Orchestra and was declared bankrupt. The concerts were rescued by the musical benefactor Sir Edgar SpeyerEdgar Speyer
Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet was an American-born financier and philanthropist. He became a British subject in 1892 and was chairman of Speyer Brothers, the British branch of his family's international finance house, and a partner in the German and American branches...
, a banker of German origin. Speyer put up the necessary funds, retained Newman as manager of the concerts, and encouraged him and Wood to continue with their project of improving the public's taste. At the beginning of 1902, Wood accepted the conductorship of that year's Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
triennial festival. He continued to be associated with that festival until 1936, changing its emphasis from choral to orchestral pieces. A German critic, reviewing the festival for a Berlin publication, wrote, "Two personalities now represent a new epoch in English musical life – Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
as composer, and Henry J. Wood as conductor." Later in the year, overtaxed by his enormous workload, Wood's health broke down. Even though this was during the Proms season, Cathcart insisted that Wood should have a complete break and change of scene. Leaving the leader of the orchestra, Arthur Payne, to conduct during his absence, Wood and his wife took a cruise to Morocco, missing the Proms concerts from 13 October to 8 November.
In the early years of the Proms there were complaints in some musical journals that Wood was neglecting British music. In 1899 Newman unsuccessfully attempted to secure for Wood the premiere of Elgar's Enigma Variations
Enigma Variations
Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...
, but in the same year Newman passed up the opportunity to introduce the music of Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
to London concertgoers. By the end of the first decade of the new century, however, Wood's reputation in conducting British music was in no doubt; he gave the world, British or London premieres of more than a hundred British works between 1900 and 1910. Meanwhile, he introduced his audiences to many European composers. In the 1903 season, he programmed symphonies by Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...
(No. 7
Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner)
Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major is one of his best-known symphonies. It was written between 1881 and 1883 and was revised in 1885. It is dedicated to Ludwig II of Bavaria. The premiere, given under Arthur Nikisch and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the opera house at Leipzig on 30...
), Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
(No. 1
Symphony No. 1 (Sibelius)
Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 was written in 1898, when Sibelius was 33. The work was first performed on 26 April 1899 by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer, in an original version which has not survived. After the premiere, Sibelius made some...
), and Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
(No. 1
Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany...
). In the same year, he introduced several of Richard Strauss's tone poems to London, and in 1905 he gave Strauss's Symphonia Domestica
Symphonia Domestica
Symphonia Domestica, Op. 53 is a tone poem for large orchestra by Richard Strauss. The work is a musical reflection of the secure domestic life so valued by the composer himself and, as such, harmoniously conveys daily events and family life.-History and composition:In 1898, Strauss became the...
. This prompted the composer to write, "I cannot leave London without an expression of admiration for the splendid Orchestra which Henry Wood's master hand has created in such a short time."
Creating the orchestra admired by Strauss had not been achieved without a struggle. In 1904, Wood and Newman tackled the deputy system, in which orchestral players, if offered a better-paid engagement, could send a substitute to a rehearsal or a concert. The treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society described it thus: "A, whom you want, signs to play at your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to the first rehearsal. B, without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D, whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away." After a rehearsal in which Wood was faced with a sea of entirely unfamiliar faces in his own orchestra, Newman came on the platform to announce: "Gentlemen, in future there will be no deputies; good morning." Forty players resigned en bloc and formed their own orchestra: the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
. Wood bore no grudge and attended their first concert, although it was 12 years before he agreed to conduct the orchestra.
Wood had great sympathy for rank-and-file orchestral players and strove for improvements in their pay. He sought to raise their status and was the first British conductor to insist that the orchestra should stand to acknowledge applause along with the conductor. He introduced women into the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1913. He said, "I do not like ladies playing the trombone or double bass, but they can play the violin, and they do." By 1918 Wood had 14 women in his orchestra.
Wood conducted his own compositions and arrangements from time to time. He gave his Fantasia on Welsh Melodies and Fantasia on Scottish Melodies on successive nights in 1909. He composed the work for which he is most celebrated, Fantasia on British Sea Songs
Fantasia on British Sea Songs
Fantasia on British Sea Songs or Fantasy on British Sea Songs is a piece of classical music arranged by Sir Henry Wood in 1905 to mark the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. It is a medley of British sea songs and for many years was seen as an indispensable item at the BBC's Last Night of the...
, for a concert in 1905, celebrating the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
. It caught the public fancy immediately, with its mixture of sea-shanties, together with Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's "See the Conquering Hero Comes" and Arne's "Rule, Britannia!". He played it at the Proms more than 40 times, and it became a fixture at the "Last Night of the Proms", the lively concert marking the end of each season. It remained so under his successors, though often rearranged, notably by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
. A highlight of the Fantasia is the hornpipe
Hornpipe
The term hornpipe refers to any of several dance forms played and danced in Britain and elsewhere from the late 17th century until the present day. It is said that hornpipe as a dance began around the 16th century on English sailing vessels...
("Jack's the Lad"); Wood said of it:
They stamp their feet in time to the hornpipe – that is until I whip up the orchestra to a fierce accelerando which leaves behind all those whose stamping technique is not of the very finest quality. I like to win by two bars, if possible; but sometimes have to be content with a bar and a half. It is good fun, and I enjoy it as much as they.
Among Wood's other works was his Purcell Suite, incorporating themes from Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
's stage works and string sonatas, which Wood performed at an orchestral festival in Zurich in 1921, and orchestral transcriptions of works by a range of composers from Albéniz
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual was a Spanish Catalan pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music idioms .-Life:Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz and his wife Dolors Pascual, Albéniz...
to Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
.
Wood worked with his wife for many concerts, and was her piano accompanist at her recitals. In 1906, at the Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
music festival he presented Beethoven's Choral
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
Symphony and Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's St Matthew Passion, with his wife among the singers. In December 1909, after a short illness, Olga Wood died. Cathcart took Wood away to take his mind off his loss. On his return, Wood resumed his professional routine, with the exception that, after Olga's death, he rarely performed as piano accompanist for anyone else; his skill in that art was greatly missed by the critics. In June 1911, he married his secretary, Muriel Ellen Greatrex (1882–1967), with whom he had two daughters. In the same year he accepted a knighthood
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
, and declined the conductorship of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in succession to Mahler, as he felt it his duty to devote himself to the British public.
Throughout the early part of the century, Wood was influential in changing the habits of concertgoers. Until then it had been customary for audiences at symphony or choral concerts to applaud after each movement or section. Wood discouraged this, sometime by gesture and sometimes by specific request printed in programmes. For this he was much praised in the musical and national press. In addition to his work at the Queen's Hall, Wood conducted at the Sheffield, Norwich, Birmingham, Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
, and Westmorland
Westmorland
Westmorland is an area of North West England and one of the 39 historic counties of England. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974, after which the entirety of the county was absorbed into the new county of Cumbria.-Early history:...
festivals, and at orchestral concerts in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
and Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
. His programming was summarised in The Manchester Guardian, which listed the number of each composer's works played in the 1911 Proms season; the top ten were: Wagner (121); Beethoven (34); Tchaikovsky (30); Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
(28); Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
(16); Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
(16); J. S. Bach (14); Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
(14); Elgar (14); and Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
(13).
The 1912 and 1913 Prom seasons are singled out by Cox as among the finest of this part of Wood's career. Among those conducting their own works or hearing Wood conduct them were Strauss, Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
, Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
, Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
and Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
. Rehearsing Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, Wood urged his players, "Stick to it, gentlemen! This is nothing to what you'll have to play in 25 years' time". The critic Ernest Newman
Ernest Newman
Ernest Newman was an English music critic and musicologist. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes him as "the most celebrated British music critic in the first half of the 20th century." His style of criticism, aiming at intellectual objectivity in contrast to the more subjective...
wrote: "It is not often that an English audience hisses the music it does not like, but a good third of the people at Queen's Hall last Tuesday permitted themselves that luxury after the performance of the five orchestral pieces of Schoenberg. Another third of the audience was only not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss; so that on the whole it does not look as if Schoenberg has so far made many friends in London." The composer was delighted with the performance and congratulated Wood and the orchestra warmly: "I must say it was the first time since Gustav Mahler that I heard such music played again as a musician of culture demands." Wood programmed the work again in 1914, when it was much more warmly received.
First World War and post-war
On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Newman, Wood and Speyer discussed whether the Proms should continue as planned. They had by this time become an established institution, and it was agreed to go ahead. However, anti-German feeling forced Speyer to leave the country and seek refuge in the U.S., and there was a campaign to ban all German music from concerts. Newman put out a statement declaring that German music would be played as planned: "The greatest examples of Music and Art are world possessions and unassailable even by the prejudices and passions of the hour." When Speyer left Britain, the music publishers Chappell's took on the responsibility for the Queen's Hall and its orchestra. The Proms continued throughout the war years, with fewer major new works than before, although there were nevertheless British premieres of pieces by BartókBéla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
. An historian of the Proms, Ateş Orga, wrote, "Concerts often had to be re-timed to coincide with the 'All Clear' between air raids. Falling bombs, shrapnel, anti-aircraft fire and the droning of Zeppelins were ever threatening. But [Wood] kept things on the go and in the end had a very real part to play in boosting morale."
Towards the end of the war, Wood received an offer by which he was seriously tempted: the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
invited him to become its musical director. He had been guest conductor of the Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, but he regarded the Boston orchestra as the finest in the world. Nonetheless, as he told Boult, "it was hard to refuse, but I felt it was a patriotic duty to remain in my own country, at the present moment."
After the war, the Proms continued much as before. The second halves of concerts still featured piano-accompanied songs rather than serious classical music. Chappell's, having taken over sponsorship of the Proms and spent £35,000 keeping the Queen's Hall going during the war, wished to promote songs published by the company. The management of Chappell's were also less enthusiastic than Wood and Newman about promoting new orchestral works, most of which were not profitable.
In 1921 Wood was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first English conductor to receive the honour. By now he was beginning to find his position as Britain's leading conductor under challenge from rising younger rivals. Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
had been an increasingly influential figure since about 1910. He and Wood did not like one another, and each avoided mention of the other in his memoirs. Adrian Boult, who, at Wood's recommendation, took over some of his responsibilities at Birmingham in 1923, always admired and respected Wood. Other younger conductors included men who had been members of Wood's orchestra, including Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron, CBE was an English conductor. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, the son of a German immigrant family. His birth name was Basil George Cameron Hindenberg. -Career:...
and Eugene Goossens
Eugène Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.-Biography:He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens and the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens...
. Another protégé of Wood was Malcolm Sargent
Malcolm Sargent
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
, who appeared at the Proms as a composer-conductor in 1921 and 1922. Wood encouraged him to abandon thoughts of a career as a pianist and to concentrate on conducting. Wood further showed his interest in the future of music by taking on the conductorship of the student orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music in 1923, rehearsing it twice a week, whenever possible, for the next twenty years. In the same year, he accepted the conductorship of the amateur Hull Philharmonic Orchestra, travelling three times a year until 1939 to rehearse and conduct its concerts.
In 1925 Wood was invited to conduct four concerts for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
. Such was their success, both artistic and financial, that Wood was invited back, and conducted again the following year. In addition to a large number of English pieces, Wood programmed works by composers as diverse as Bach and Stravinsky. He again conducted there in 1934.
BBC and the Proms
On his return to England from his first Hollywood trip, Wood found himself in the middle of a feud between the chairman of Chappell's, William Boosey, and the BBC. Boosey had conceived a passionate hostility to the broadcasting of music, fearing that it would lead to the end of live concerts. He attempted to prevent anyone who wished to perform at the Queen's Hall from broadcasting for the BBC. This affected many of the artists whom Wood and Newman needed for the Proms. The matter was unresolved when Newman died in 1926. Shortly afterwards, Boosey announced that Chappell's would no longer support concerts at the Queen's Hall. The prospect that the Proms might not be able to continue caused widespread dismay, and there was a general welcome for the BBC's announcement that it would take over the running of the Proms, and would also run a winter series of symphony concerts at the Queen's Hall.The BBC regime brought immediate benefits. The use of the second half of concerts to promote Chappell's songs ceased, to be replaced by music chosen for its own excellence: on the first night under the BBC's control, the songs in the second half were by Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, Quilter
Roger Quilter
Roger Quilter was an English composer, known particularly for his songs.-Biography:Born in Hove, Sussex, Quilter was a younger son of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, who was a noted art collector...
and Parry
Hubert Parry
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", the coronation anthem "I was glad" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words...
rather than ballads from Chappell's. For Wood, the greatest benefit was that the BBC gave him twice as much rehearsal time as he had previously enjoyed. He now had a daily rehearsal and extra rehearsals as needed. He was also allowed extra players when large scores called for them, instead of having to rescore the work for the forces available.
In 1929, Wood played a celebrated practical joke on musicologists and critics. "I got very fed up with them, always finding fault with any arrangement or orchestrations that I made ... 'spoiling the original' etc. etc.", and so Wood passed off his own orchestration of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor
Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. It is one of the most famous works in the organ repertoire, and has been used in a variety of popular media ranging from film, video games, to rock music, and ringtones...
, as a transcription by a Russian composer called Paul Klenovsky. In Wood's later account, the press and the BBC "fell into the trap and said the scoring was wonderful, Klenovsky had the real flare [sic] for true colour etc. – and performance after performance was given and asked for." Wood kept the secret for five years before revealing the truth. The press treated the deception as a great joke; The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
entered into the spirit of it with a jocular tribute to the lamented Klenovsky.
As Wood's working life took a turn for the better, his domestic life started to deteriorate. During the early 1930s, he and his wife gradually became estranged, and their relationship ended in bitterness, with Muriel taking most of Wood's money and, for much of the time, living abroad. She refused to divorce him. The breach between Muriel and Wood also caused his estrangement from their daughters. In 1934 he began a happy relationship with a widowed former pupil, Jessie Linton, who had sung for him frequently in the past under her professional name of Jessie Goldsack. One of Wood's players recalled, "She changed him. He had been badly dressed, awful clothes. Jessie got him a new evening suit, instead of the mouldy green one, and he flourished yellow gloves and a cigar ... he became human." As Wood was not free to remarry, she changed her name by deed poll to "Lady Jessie Wood" and was generally assumed by the public to be Wood's wife. In his memoirs, Wood mentioned neither his second marriage nor his subsequent relationship.
In his later years, Wood came to be identified with the Proms rather than with the year-round concert season. Boult was appointed director of music at the BBC in 1930. In that capacity he strove to ensure that Wood was invited to conduct a fitting number of BBC symphony concerts outside the Prom season. The BBC chose Wood for important collaborations with Bartók and Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, and for the first British performance of Mahler's vast Symphony No. 8
Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is often performed with fewer than a...
. But Jacobs notes that, in the general concert repertory, Wood now had to compete against well-known foreign conductors such as Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
, Willem Mengelberg
Willem Mengelberg
Joseph Willem Mengelberg was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.- Biography :...
, and Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
, "in comparison with whom he was increasingly seen as a workhorse".
Last years
In 1936, Wood was in charge of his final Sheffield festival. The choral works he conducted included the VerdiGiuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
Requiem
Requiem (Verdi)
The Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi is a musical setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass for four soloists, double choir and orchestra. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist much admired by Verdi. The first performance in San Marco in Milan on 22 May...
, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
Missa Solemnis (Beethoven)
The Missa solemnis in D Major, Op. 123 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819-1823. It was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin; an incomplete performance was given in Vienna on 7 May 1824, when the Kyrie,...
, Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
' Te Deum
Te Deum (Berlioz)
The Te Deum by Hector Berlioz was completed in 1849. It, like the earlier and more famous Grande Messe des Morts, is one of Berlioz's "architectural" works...
, Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
's Belshazzar's Feast
Belshazzar's Feast (Walton)
Belshazzar's Feast is an oratorio by the English composer William Walton. It was first performed at the Leeds Festival on 8 October 1931. The work has remained one of Walton's most celebrated compositions and one of the most popular works in the English choral repertoire...
, and, in the presence of the composer, Rachmaninoff's The Bells. The following year, Wood began planning for a grand concert to mark his fiftieth year as a conductor. The Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
was chosen as the venue, having a far larger capacity than the Queen's Hall. The concert was given on 5 October 1938. Rachmaninoff played the solo part in his Second Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900...
, and Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, at Wood's request, composed a short choral work for the occasion: the Serenade to Music
Serenade to Music
Serenade to Music is a work by Ralph Vaughan Williams for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra, composed in 1938. The text is an adaptation of the discussion about music and the music of the spheres in Act V, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Vaughan Williams later arranged...
for orchestra and 16 soloists. The other composers represented in the programme were Sullivan, Beethoven, Bach, Bax
Arnold Bax
Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, KCVO was an English composer and poet. His musical style blended elements of romanticism and impressionism, often with influences from Irish literature and landscape. His orchestral scores are noted for their complexity and colourful instrumentation...
, Wagner, Handel and Elgar. The orchestra comprised players from the three London orchestras: the London Symphony, London Philharmonic
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The concert raised £9,000 for Wood's chosen charity, providing health care for musicians. In the same year, Wood published his autobiography, My Life of Music.
On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the BBC immediately put into effect its contingency plans to move much of its broadcasting away from London to places thought less susceptible to bombing. Its musical activities, including the orchestra, moved to Bristol. The BBC withdrew not only the players, but financial support from the Proms. Wood determined that the 1940 season would nevertheless go ahead. The Royal Philharmonic Society and a private entrepreneur, Keith Douglas, agreed to back an eight-week season, and the London Symphony Orchestra was engaged. The season was curtailed after four weeks, when intense bombing forced the Queen's Hall to close. The last Prom given at the Queen's Hall was on 7 September 1940. In May 1941, the hall was destroyed by bombs.
It was immediately agreed that the 1941 season of Proms should be held at the Albert Hall. It was twice the size of the Queen's Hall, with poor acoustics, but a six-week series was judged a success, and the Albert Hall remained the home of the Proms. Wood, aged seventy-two, was persuaded to have an associate conductor to relieve him of some of the burden. Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron
Basil Cameron, CBE was an English conductor. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, the son of a German immigrant family. His birth name was Basil George Cameron Hindenberg. -Career:...
undertook the task and remained a Prom conductor until his retirement, aged eighty, in 1964. The BBC brought its symphony orchestra back to London and resumed its backing of the Proms in 1942; Boult joined Cameron as Wood's associate conductor during that season. In early 1943, Wood's health deteriorated, and two days after the start of that year's season, he collapsed and was ordered to have a month in bed. Despite wartime vicissitudes, the 1943 season sold nearly 250,000 tickets, with an average audience of about 4,000 – many more than could have fitted into the Queen's Hall.
Despite his age and the difficulties of wartime travel, Wood insisted on going to provincial cities to conduct – as much, according to Jacobs, to help the local orchestras survive as to gratify audiences. His final season was in 1944. The season began well with Wood in good form, but after three weeks raids by the devastating new German flying bombs caused the government to order the closure of places of entertainment. The Proms were immediately relocated to Bedford
Bedford
Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...
some 50 miles (80.5 km) away, where Wood continued to conduct. He was taken ill in early August and was unable to conduct the fiftieth anniversary Prom on 10 August; he was forbidden by his doctor even to listen to its broadcast. Wood died just over a week later on 19 August at Hitchin Hospital in Hitchin
Hitchin
Hitchin is a town in Hertfordshire, England, with an estimated population of 30,360.-History:Hitchin is first noted as the central place of the Hicce people mentioned in a 7th century document, the Tribal Hidage. The tribal name is Brittonic rather than Old English and derives from *siccā, meaning...
, Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
; his funeral service was held in the town at St Mary's church, and his ashes were interred in the Musicians' Chapel of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
.
Recordings
Wood's recording career began in 1908, when he accompanied his wife Olga in "Farewell, forests" by Tchaikovsky, for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company, better known as His Master's VoiceHMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
or HMV. They made eight other records together for HMV over the next two years. After Olga's death, Wood signed a contract with HMV's rival, Columbia
Columbia Graphophone Company
The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...
, for whom he made a series of discs between 1915 and 1917 with the singer Clara Butt
Clara Butt
Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE , sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English contralto with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.-Early life and career:Clara Butt was born in Southwick,...
, including excerpts from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius, popularly called just Gerontius, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory...
. Between 1915 and 1925 he conducted 65 recordings for Columbia using the early acoustic recording process, including many discs of Wagner excerpts and a truncated version of Elgar's Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Elgar)
Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, is one of his longest orchestral compositions, and the last of his works to gain immediate popular success....
with Albert Sammons
Albert Sammons
Albert Edward Sammons CBE was an English violinist, composer and later violin teacher. Almost self-taught on the violin, he had a wide repertoire as both chamber musician and soloist, although his reputation rests mainly on his association with British composers, especially Elgar...
as soloist. When the microphone and electrical recording were introduced in 1925, Wood re-recorded the Elgar concerto, with Sammons, and made 36 other discs for Columbia over the next nine years. The 1929 recording of the Elgar concerto has been reissued on compact disc and is well regarded by some critics.
Wood was wooed from Columbia by the young Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
company in 1935. For Decca he conducted 23 recordings over the next two years, including Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1804–08. This symphony is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in all of classical music, and one of the most often played symphonies. It comprises four movements: an opening sonata, an andante, and a fast...
, Elgar's Enigma Variations
Enigma Variations
Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...
and Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony
A London Symphony
A London Symphony is the second symphony composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work is sometimes referred to as the Symphony No. 2, though it was not designated as such by the composer...
. In 1938 he returned to Columbia, for whom his five new recordings included the Serenade to Music with the 16 original singers, a few days after the premiere, and his own Fantasia on British Sea Songs.
Wood's recordings did not remain in the catalogues long after his death. The Record Guide
The Record Guide
The Record Guide was an English reference work, listing, describing and evaluating gramophone recordings of classical music in the 1950s. It was the precursor of modern guides such as The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music-Publication history:...
, 1956, lists none of his records. A few of his recordings have subsequently been reissued on compact disc, including the Decca and Columbia Vaughan Williams recordings from 1936 and 1938.
Premieres
In Jacobs's 1994 biography, the list of premieres conducted by Wood extends to 18 pages. His world premieres included BrittenBenjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Piano Concerto; Delius's A Song Before Sunrise, A Song of Summer
A Song of Summer
A Song of Summer is a tone poem for orchestra by Frederick Delius, completed in 1931.A Song of Summer derived from an unpublished 1918 symphonic work, originally called Poem of Life and Love. In 1921, Delius told Peter Warlock that he had misplaced most of that score...
, and Idyll; Elgar's The Wand of Youth Suite No. 1, Sospiri and the 4th and 5th Pomp and Circumstance Marches
Pomp and Circumstance Marches
The "Pomp and Circumstance Marches" , Op. 39 are a series of marches for orchestra composed by Sir Edward Elgar....
; and Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
's Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1, Flos Campi
Flos Campi
Flos Campi: suite for solo viola, small chorus and small orchestra is a composition by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, completed in 1925. Its title is Latin for "flower of the field". It is neither a concerto nor a choral piece, although it prominently features the viola and a...
and Serenade to Music.
Wood's UK premieres included Bartók's Dance Suite; Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...
's Joyeuse Marche; Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
's Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid (ballet)
Billy the Kid is a 1938 ballet written by the American composer Aaron Copland and commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein. It was choreographed by Eugene Loring for Ballet Caravan. Along with Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, it is one of Copland's most popular and widely performed pieces...
; Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , commonly known by its English title Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration...
and Ibéria
Images pour orchestre
Images pour orchestre is an orchestral composition in three sections by Claude Debussy. Debussy wrote the music between 1905 and 1912. Debussy had originally intended this set of Images as a two-piano sequel to the first set of Images , in a letter to his publisher Durand as of September 1905...
; Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
's Kammermusik 2 and 5; Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
's Sinfonietta
Sinfonietta (Janácek)
The Sinfonietta is a very expressive and festive, late work for large orchestra by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček...
, Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba (rhapsody)
Taras Bulba is a rhapsody for orchestra by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. It was composed in 1918 and belongs to the most powerful of Janáček's scores. It is based on the novel by Gogol....
and Glagolitic Mass
Glagolitic Mass
The Glagolitic Mass is a composition for soloists , double chorus, organ and orchestra by Leoš Janáček. The work was completed on 15 October 1926...
; Kodály
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
's Dances from Galanta; Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 4
Symphony No. 4 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 4 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1899 and 1901, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. The song, "Das himmlische Leben", presents a child's vision of Heaven. It is sung by a soprano in the work's fourth and last movement...
, 7
Symphony No. 7 (Mahler)
Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony was written in 1904-05, with repeated revisions to the scoring. It is sometimes referred to by the title Song of the Night , though this title was not Mahler's own and he disapproved of it. Although the symphony is often described as being in the key of 'E minor,'...
and 8
Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is often performed with fewer than a...
, and Das Lied von der Erde
Das Lied von der Erde
Das Lied von der Erde is a large-scale work for two vocal soloists and orchestra by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler...
; Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
's Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev set about composing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10 in 1911 and finished it in 1912. A one-movement concerto, it is the shortest of his five complete piano concertos, lasting only around a quarter of an hour.- Structure :...
and Violin Concerto No. 2
Violin Concerto No. 2 (Prokofiev)
The Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63, written in 1935 by Sergei Prokofiev, is a work in three movements:#Allegro moderato#Andante assai#Allegro, ben marcato...
; Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
's Piano Concerto No 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, in 1892, at age 19. He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti. He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.-First version:...
; Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
's Ma Mère l'Oie, Rapsodie espagnole
Rapsodie espagnole
Rapsodie espagnole is an orchestral rhapsody written by Maurice Ravel. Composed between 1907 and 1908, the Rapsodie represents one of Ravel's first major works for orchestra....
, La Valse
La Valse
La valse, un poème choréographique pour orchestre , is a work written by Maurice Ravel from February 1919 until 1920 ; it was conceived as a ballet but is now more often heard as a concert work...
and Piano Concerto in D
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Ravel)
The Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major was composed by Maurice Ravel between 1929 and 1930, concurrently with his Piano Concerto in G. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I....
; Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol
Capriccio espagnol
Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34, is the common Western title for an orchestral work based on Spanish folk melodies and written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1887. Rimsky-Korsakov originally intended to write the work for a solo violin with orchestra, but later decided that a purely orchestral work...
, Scheherazade
Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov)
Sheherazade , Op. 35, is a symphonic suite composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888. Based on One Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as The Arabian Nights, this orchestral work combines two features common to Russian music and of Rimsky-Korsakov in particular: dazzling, colourful...
, and Symphony No. 2; Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
's The Carnival of the Animals
The Carnival of the Animals
Le carnaval des animaux is a musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The orchestral work has a duration between 22 and 30 minutes.-History:...
; Schumann's Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra; Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's Piano Concerto No. 1
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)
The Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra, Op. 35, was completed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1933 and premiered the same year by the composer at the piano and the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Despite the title, it is a true piano concerto rather than a double concerto in...
and Symphonies Nos. 7
Symphony No. 7 (Shostakovich)
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 dedicated to the city of Leningrad was completed on 27 December 1941. In its time, the symphony was extremely popular in both Russia and the West as a symbol of resistance and defiance to Nazi totalitarianism and militarism...
and 8
Symphony No. 8 (Shostakovich)
The Symphony No. 8 in C minor by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed on November 4 of that year by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated....
; Sibelius's Symphonies Nos. 1
Symphony No. 1 (Sibelius)
Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 was written in 1898, when Sibelius was 33. The work was first performed on 26 April 1899 by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer, in an original version which has not survived. After the premiere, Sibelius made some...
, 6
Symphony No. 6 (Sibelius)
Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 6 in D minor, Op. 104, was completed in 1923. Although the symphony is usually described as being "in D minor" the score does not contain a key attribution. Much of the symphony is in fact in the Dorian mode....
and 7
Symphony No. 7 (Sibelius)
The Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105, was the final published symphony of Jean Sibelius. Completed in 1924, the Seventh is notable for being a one-movement symphony, in contrast to the standard symphonic formula of four movements...
, Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Sibelius)
The Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47, was written by Jean Sibelius in 1904.-History:Sibelius originally dedicated the concerto to the noted violinist Willy Burmester, who promised to play the concerto in Berlin...
, Karelia Suite
Karelia Suite
The Karelia Suite, Op. 11, is a collection of orchestral pieces composed by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.The pieces in this suite are drawn from several independent works he wrote in 1893 for a patriotic historical pageant to be presented by students of the University of Helsinki in Viipuri,...
, and Tapiola
Tapiola (Sibelius)
Tapiola , Op. 112, is a tone poem by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, written in 1926. It was the product of a commission from Walter Damrosch for the New York Philharmonic Society...
; Richard Strauss's Symphonia Domestica
Symphonia Domestica
Symphonia Domestica, Op. 53 is a tone poem for large orchestra by Richard Strauss. The work is a musical reflection of the secure domestic life so valued by the composer himself and, as such, harmoniously conveys daily events and family life.-History and composition:In 1898, Strauss became the...
; Stravinsky's The Firebird
The Firebird
The Firebird is a 1910 ballet created by the composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Michel Fokine. The ballet is based on Russian folk tales of the magical glowing bird of the same name that is both a blessing and a curse to its captor....
(suite); Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony
Manfred Symphony
The Manfred Symphony in B minor, Op. 58, is a programmatic symphony composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between May and September 1885. It is based on the poem "Manfred" written by Lord Byron in 1817...
and Nutcracker Suite
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
; and Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
's Passacaglia.
Honours, memorials and reputation
In addition to the knighthood bestowed in 1911, Wood's state honours were his appointments as Companion of Honour in 1944, to the Order of the CrownOrder of the Crown (Belgium)
The Order of the Crown is an Order of Belgium which was created on 15 October 1897 by King Leopold II in his capacity as ruler of the Congo Free State. The order was first intended to recognize heroic deeds and distinguished service achieved from service in the Congo Free State - many of which acts...
(Belgium; 1920), and Officer of the Legion of Honour (France; 1926). He received honorary doctorates from five English universities and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Music (1920) and the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
(1923).
Jacobs lists 26 compositions dedicated to Wood, including, in addition to the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, works by Elgar, Delius, Bax, Marcel Dupré
Marcel Dupré
Marcel Dupré , was a French organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue.-Biography:Marcel Dupré was born in Rouen . Born into a musical family, he was a child prodigy. His father Albert Dupré was organist in Rouen and a friend of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who built an organ in the family house when...
, and William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
. The poet laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
, John Masefield
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
, composed a poem of six verses in his honour, entitled "Sir Henry Wood", often referred to by its first line, "Where does the uttered music go?". Walton set it to music as an anthem for mixed choir; it received its first performance on 26 April 1946 at St Sepulchre's, on the occasion of a ceremony unveiling a memorial stained-glass window in Wood's honour.
Wood is commemorated in the name of the Henry Wood Hall, the deconsecrated Holy Trinity Church in Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...
, which was converted to a rehearsal and recording venue in 1975. His bust stands upstage centre in the Royal Albert Hall during the whole of each Prom season, decorated by a chaplet
Laurel wreath
A laurel wreath is a circular wreath made of interlocking branches and leaves of the bay laurel , an aromatic broadleaf evergreen. In Greek mythology, Apollo is represented wearing a laurel wreath on his head...
on the Last Night of the Proms. His collection of 2,800 orchestral scores and 1,920 sets of parts is now in the library of the Royal Academy of Music. For the Academy he also established the Henry Wood Fund, giving financial aid to students. The University of Strathclyde
University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...
named a building at its Jordanhill campus
Jordanhill College
Jordanhill Campus, in Jordanhill, Glasgow, Scotland, is now home to the Faculty of Education of the University of Strathclyde. Within the University of Strathclyde faculty of education, departments include Childhood and Primary Studies, Creative and Aesthetic Studies, Curricular Studies,...
after him. His best-known memorial is the Proms, officially "the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", but universally referred to by the informal short version.
His biographer Arthur Jacobs wrote of Wood:
His orchestral players affectionately nicknamed him "Timber" – more than a play on his name, since it seemed to represent his reliability too. His tally of first performances, or first performances in Britain, was heroic: at least 717 works by 357 composers. Greatness as measured by finesse of execution may not be his, particularly in his limited legacy of recordings, but he remains one of the most remarkable musicians Britain has produced.
External links
- Searchable archive of Henry Wood's Proms performances on BBC Proms website at www.bbc.co.uk
- Concert Programmes 1790-1914 at www.cph.rcm.ac.uk
- Two digitally restored recordings conducted by Sir Henry Wood