Dr Thomas-Wood
Biography Part11

Dr Wood in the National Portrait gallery

WOOD, THOMAS (1892-1950), composer and author, was born on 28 November 1892 at Chorley, Lancashire, England, only child of Thomas Wood, master mariner, and his wife Hannah, née Lee. Tommy later believed that his formal education had been immeasurably enriched by boyhood voyages with his father. Despite congenitally poor vision due to cataracts in both eyes, in 1913 he completed an external bachelor's degree in music through the University of Oxford. That year he entered Christ Church, Oxford, and moved in 1916 to Exeter College with which he was to remain associated. Rejected seven times as unfit for the navy during World War I, he joined a department of the Admiralty in 1917. After graduating from Oxford (B.A., 1918; M.A., 1920), he studied under Sir Charles Stanford at the Royal College of Music (D.Mus., 1920)

In 1921 Wood was appointed director of music at Tonbridge School, Kent, where one of his students recalled him as a 'bespectacled, untidy, little man'. Wood returned to Exeter College where he was a lecturer in 1924-27. In both posts he won golden opinions and began to compose choral and orchestral works, some of which subsequently received acclaim. On 2 July 1924 at the parish church, Wormingford, Essex, he had married St Osyth Mahala Eustace-Smith.

Apart from music, the prevailing passions of Wood's life were the British Empire, foreign travel and the sea; his writing is instinct with a fervent Imperial sentiment. He came to Australia in 1930 to conduct examinations for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and spent some two years travelling across the country. On his return to England, he wrote Cobbers (London, 1934), still the most perceptive and captivating characterization of Australia and its people ever written by a visitor. Wood revelled in the company of 'hard boiled citizens' and in the ways of ordinary men and women, but a deep sense of beauty and poetry combined with affectionate humour to produce his memorable descriptions, particularly of regional differences. As a collector of folk songs, he was so impressed by Waltzing Matilda—which he thought good enough 'to be the unofficial national anthem of Australia'—that he included its words and music in Cobbers.

In May 1936 Wood joined the British Ministry of Information. That year he published an excellent, 'modest but finely wrought', autobiography, True Thomas. He visited Canada in the late 1930s and then wrote Cobbers Campaigning (London, 1940) in tribute to Australia's part in World War II. In the latter book he wrote: 'There is no turning back. I am now part of Australia, and—for ever—Australia is part of me'. Sponsored by the British government, in 1944 he returned to Australia to give a series of popular talks and broadcasts about wartime Britain. He was a committee-member of the Royal Philharmonic Society and chairman (1949) of the music panel of the British Arts Council. Survived by his wife, Wood died of coronary thrombosis on 19 November 1950 at his home at Bures, Suffolk, and was cremated. His estate was sworn for probate at £118,868.

Dictionary of National Biography, 1941-50; Sydney Morning Herald, 11, 30 Oct 1939, 29 Apr 1944, 20, 21 Nov 1950; Times (London), 20, 24 Nov 1950, 24 Apr 1951. More on the resources

Author: Russel Ward, Australia

Ref Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies

Wood, Thomas (1892–1950), composer, was born on 28 November 1892 at Chorley, Lancashire, the only child of Thomas Wood, a master mariner, and his wife, Hannah Lee. As a child he accompanied his father on many voyages and he always regarded this experience as an education of the most effective kind. It was supplemented, in his case, however, by other schooling, both general and musical; and Wood had already completed an external degree in music at Oxford before he arrived there in 1913 to work for the degree of BA which he obtained in 1918. In 1916 he migrated from Christ Church to Exeter College, with which he was to be associated for the rest of his life, and in 1917 his studies were interrupted by a period at the Admiralty. After the war, at the Royal College of Music, he studied under the direction of Sir Charles Stanford, to whom Wood's music owes much. He became DMus in 1920.

Wood spent a short time as director of music at Tonbridge School. On 2 July 1924 he married St Osyth Mahala (b. 1886/7), daughter of Thomas Eustace-Smith. The same year he returned to Exeter College as lecturer (he held the post until 1927) and there began the compositions for which he soon became known. During the next thirty years he produced a series of works, both choral and orchestral, of which the most successful were Forty Singing Seamen (1925), A Seaman's Overture (1927), Daniel and the Lions (1938), Chanticleer (1947), and The Rainbow (1951). Wood's achievements were made despite eyesight so poor as to be near blindness.

Apart from music the prevailing passions of Wood's life were the sea, foreign travel, and the British empire. For the empire he had a romantic idealist's love. He undertook extensive journeys, sometimes for musical activities, sometimes for personal interests, and at least once (1944) for the government. These journeys provided material for a number of books of which Cobbers (1934) was widely acclaimed as a penetrating account of the Australian scene and character. Wood's music was naturally influenced by these interests. English life, in the country or at sea, and the ways of ordinary men and women are the constant themes to which its sturdy plain-spoken individuality is well suited. After 1945, having come to feel that his wide interests were dissipating his talent, Wood prepared to devote himself wholly to musical composition. His sudden and untimely death on 19 November 1950, at his home, Parsonage Hall, Bures, Suffolk, frustrated an intention upon which his friends had based high hopes. He had been elected an honorary fellow of his college, and had been made a member of the Arts Council, in the previous year.

Thomas Armstrong, rev.