Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 186919 August 1944) was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, 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 García 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.
Biography
Early years Wood was born in Oxford Street, London, on 3 March 1869,Henry Joseph Wood. March 3, 1869 - August 19, 1944 The Musical Times, September 1944 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.Jacobs, p. 4 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.Wood, p. 13 The young Wood also learned to play the violin and viola.Jacobs, p. 6
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.Wood, p. 17 and Jacobs, p. 6 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 International 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.Jacobs, p. 10 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, p. 29 Wood also accompanied the opera class, taught by Garcia's son Gustave.Jacobs, p. 13 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.""Occasional Notes", The Musical Times, November 1927, p. 1007–08
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"Wood, p. 36 at half a guinea an hour. He also worked as a répétiteur. 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.Wood, p. 39 His biographer Arthur Jacobs doubts this and discounts exchanges Wood purported to have had with Sir Arthur Sullivan about the score.Jacobs, p. 14 Jacobs describes Wood's memoirs as "vivacious in style but factually unreliable".Jacobs, Arthur, "Wood, Sir Henry J." Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Retrieved 17 October 2010
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."Mr. Henry J. Wood", Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review, March 1899, pp. 389–90 Wood remained devoted to Sullivan's music and later insisted on programming his concert works when they were out of fashion in musical circles.Jacobs, p. 329 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.Jacobs, pp. 3 and 17 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,Wood, pp. 53–56 and Jacobs, pp. 19–20 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.Elkin, Robert, "Henry J. Wood: Organist, Accompanist, Opera Conductor, and Composer", The Musical Times, August 1960, pp. 488–90 This appointment was followed by a similar engagement with a company set up by former Carl Rosa singers.Wood, pp. 58–60 and Jacobs, pp. 21–22
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.Wood, p. 59 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.Jacobs, p. 24 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.Jacobs, p. 26 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. In 1894 he contributed to a song in the operetta The Lady SlaveyThe Lady Slavey - British Musical Theatre website and also conducted performances during its three month London run.J. P. Wearing, The London Stage 1890-1899: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel, Rowman & Littlefield (2014) - Google Books pg. 228 With the exception of a season at the Opera Comique in 1896, Wood's subsequent conducting career was in the concert hall.Jacobs, p. 27
Early years of the Proms
In 1894, Wood went to the Wagner festival at Bayreuth 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.Jacobs, pp. 30–32 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.Elkin, pp. 25–26 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.Elkin, p. 26 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."Orga, p. 44
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.Orga, p. 57 Refreshments were available in all parts of the hall throughout the concerts, not only during intervals.Jacobs, p. 46 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.Orga, p. 55
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.Elkin, p. 25 Wood, from his experience as a singing teacher, agreed.Jacobs, p. 34 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:Jacobs, p. 38