Ralph W Wood


Ralph Walter Wood earned his living as a businessman but was also a writer on music subjects and an amateur, though prolific, composer. He helped form the Society for the Promotion of New Music.
Born in Plumstead, London, he was mostly self-taught in music, apart from a few further education lessons from Gordon Jacob, Richard Henry Walthew and Herbert Howells at the Guildhall [School of Music and Drama|Guildhall School of Music] and Morley College. He worked at the Port of London Authority. As a composer working in his spare time he typically signed himself R.W. Wood. He wrote his Symphony No 1. in G minor, Op. 22 around 1923. Some of his pieces – such as the Three Studies for piano, composed in 1939 – were later published. He also composed a string trio at least three string quartets, and a Piano Concerto which was premiered at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 1960. There were also two operas, The Demand Boys and The Dead.
The composer began self-publishing many of his works in later life. Posthumously, his Third Quartet was broadcast by the Dartington String Quartet in June 1979. The British Music Collection holds an archive of his surviving scores.
Wood was also a writer on musical subjects, contributing essays on Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and others to publications including The Musical Times and Music and Letters. He worked several times with the editor Gerald Abraham. He famously commented that Sibelius' Violin Concerto "was the best that Tchaikovsky ever produced".
He was married to Mary Louise Ducret and there was one daughter, Diana Simmonds. They lived at various times in Ilford, Wimbledon and at 5 Doughty Street in Holborn.

Selected compositions

  • Symphony in G minor, Op. 22
  • Concerto for string orchestra
  • Divertimento for clarinet, french horn and string trio
  • Three Songs
  • *'La Vision'
  • *'Le Rat qui s'est retire du monde'
  • *'Les Séparés'
  • Suite for small orchestra
  • Three Studies for piano
  • Piano Quartet
  • Piano Concerto
  • String Quartet No. 2
  • Curfew
  • String Trio
  • Symphony No. 2
  • String Quartet No. 3
  • And When Icicles Hang for male voices
  • Quiet Pilgrimage, Choral Sinfonietta, texts Drummond, Shelley, Shakespeare, Campion.
  • Six Elegies for piano
  • The Demand Boys, opera
  • The Dead, opera
  • Symphony No. 3
  • Sequenza for double wind quintet
  • Piano Sonata
  • Sweet, be not proud, madrigal for six voices
  • Celebrazione for orchestra
  • Concerto for oboe and strings
  • Facets for wind band and optional percussion
  • Concerto da camera for ten instruments
  • Piano Quartet No. 2
  • Sonatina for flute and guitar
  • Sonatina for recorder and piano

    Selected writings

  • 'The Meaning of Beethoven', in Music & Letters, Vol. 15, Issue 3, July 1934, pp. 209–221
  • 'The Future of Music-Making ', in The Musical Times, Vol. 80, No. 1152, February 1939, p. 9
  • 'Psychology and Musical Texture', in The Musical Times, Vol. 83, No. 1191. January 1942, p. 140
  • 'Sibelius's Use of Percussion', in Music & Letters, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 10–23
  • 'Mendelssohn', in The Musical Times, Vol. 83, No. 1197, pp. 329–331
  • 'Debussy and the Minor Second', in Musical Opinion, March 1943, p. 193
  • 'Miscellaneous Orchestral Works', in The Music of Tchaikovsky, ed. Gerald Abraham
  • 'The Miscellaneous Orchestral and Theatre Music', in The Music of Sibelius, ed. Gerald Abraham
  • Contributor to A.L. Bacharach : The Music Masters, Pelican, 1957
  • 'Skryabin and His Critics' in Monthly Musical Record, November–December 1957