Andante

Charles Wood was born in Armagh in 1866, serving as a boy chorister in St Patrick’s Cathedral. He was one of the inaugural class at the Royal College of Music in 1883, studying under Stanford and Parry, then making his way to Cambridge University where he taught harmony and composition in the new and growing Music Department, becoming Director of Music at Gonville and Caius College in 1894 before finally succeeding Stanford as Professor of Music in 1924. He is best known for his church music, particularly his many service settings and anthems, with “O Thou the central orb” perhaps the best known. He also wrote a piano concerto and eight string quartets as well as some secular choral cantatas and madrigals. He wrote a small number of organ pieces, with the Andante being published in 1924 in a volume entitled “A Little Organ Book in memory of Hubert Parry”. He died in Cambridge in 1926.