Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 – 1924) was an Irish composer and professor of music. Stanford tended to reject modernism, and instead taught classical composition techniques as exemplified by Brahms. His students included composers who became more famous than their teacher, including Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He is best-known for choral works in the Anglican tradition intended for performance in church services. The Blue Bird is one of Stanford’s Eight Partsongs, Op. 119. The text is by Mary Coleridge, the great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the great niece of Sara Coleridge, author of Phantasmion. Surely, there can be no better setting of Coleridge’s ultra-blue poem than that of Stanford’s equally breathtaking and atmospheric composition.