text:
Henry Wood

Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 1869 – 19 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.

Early years
Wood was born in Oxford Street, London, on 3 March 1869, 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. 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. The young Wood also learned to play the violin and viola.

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. 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. 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 also accompanied the opera class, taught by Garcia's son Gustave. 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."

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" 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. His biographer Arthur Jacobs doubts this and discounts exchanges Wood purported to have had with Sir Arthur Sullivan about the score. Jacobs describes Wood's memoirs as "vivacious in style but factually unreliable".

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. Wood remained devoted to Sullivan's music and later insisted on programming his concert works when they were out of fashion in musical circles. 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. 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, 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. This appointment was followed by a similar engagement with a company set up by former Carl Rosa singers.

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. 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. 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. 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 Slavey and also conducted performances during its three month London run. With the exception of a season at the Opera Comique in 1896, Wood's subsequent conducting career was in the concert hall.

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. 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. 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. 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."

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. Refreshments were available in all parts of the hall throughout the concerts, not only during intervals. 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.

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. Wood, from his experience as a singing teacher, agreed. 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: Just before 8 o'clock I saw Henry Wood take up his position behind the curtain at the end of the platform – watch in hand. Punctually, on the stroke of eight, he walked quickly to the rostrum, buttonhole and all, and began the National Anthem ... A few moments for the audience to settle down, then the Rienzi Overture, and the first concert of the new Promenades had begun.

The rest of the programme comprised, in the words of an historian of the Proms, David Cox, "for the most part ... blatant trivialities." Within days, however, Wood was shifting the balance from light music to mainstream classical works, with Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and further excerpts from Wagner operas. Among the other symphonies Wood conducted during the first season were Schubert's Great C Major, Mendelssohn's Italian and Schumann's Fourth. The concertos included Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Schumann's Piano Concerto. During the season Wood presented 23 novelties, including the London premieres of pieces by Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Massenet and Rimsky-Korsakov. Newman and Wood soon felt able to devote every Monday night of the season principally to Wagner and every Friday night to Beethoven, a pattern that endured for decades.

The income from the concerts did not permit generous rehearsal time. Wood had nine hours to rehearse all the music for each week's six concerts. To gain the best results on so little rehearsal, Wood developed two facets of his conducting that remained his trademark throughout his career. First, he bought sets of the orchestral parts and marked them all with minutely detailed instructions to the players; secondly he developed a clear and expressive conducting technique. An orchestral cellist wrote that "if you watched him, you couldn't come in wrong." The violist Bernard Shore wrote, "You may be reading at sight in public, but you can't possibly go wrong with that stick in front of you". Thirty-five years after Wood's death, André Previn recounted a story by one of his players who recalled that Wood "had everything planned out and timed to the minute ... at 10 a.m. precisely his baton went down. You learned things so thoroughly with him, but in the most economical time."

Another feature of Wood's conducting was his insistence on accurate tuning; before each rehearsal and concert he would check the instrument of each member of the woodwind and string sections against a tuning fork. He persisted in this practice until 1937, when the excellence of the BBC Symphony Orchestra persuaded him that it was no longer necessary. To improve ensemble, Wood experimented with the layout of the orchestra. His preferred layout was to have the first and second violins grouped together on his left, with the cellos to his right, a layout that has since become common.

Between the first and second season of promenade concerts, Wood did his last work in the opera house, conducting Stanford's new opera Shamus O'Brien at the Opera Comique. It ran from March until July 1896, leaving Wood enough time to prepare the second Queen's Hall season, which began at the end of August. The season was so successful that Newman followed it with a winter season of Saturday night promenade concerts, but despite being popular they were not a financial success, and were not repeated in later years.

In January 1897, Wood took on the direction of the Queen's Hall's prestigious Saturday afternoon symphony concerts. He continually presented new works by composers of many nationalities, and was particularly known for his skill in Russian music. Sullivan wrote to him in 1898, "I have never heard a finer performance in England than that of the Tchaikovsky symphony under your direction last Wednesday". Seventy-five years later, Sir Adrian Boult ranked Wood as one of the two greatest Tchaikovsky conductors in his long experience. Wood also successfully challenged the widespread belief that Englishmen were not capable of conducting Wagner. When Wood and the Queen's Hall Orchestra performed at Windsor Castle in November 1898, Queen Victoria chose Tchaikovsky and Wagner for the programme. Wood, who modelled his appearance on Nikisch, took it as a compliment that the queen said to him, "Tell me, Mr Wood, are you quite English?"

In 1898, Wood married one of his singing pupils, Olga Michailoff, a divorcée a few months his senior. Jacobs describes it as "a marriage of perfect professional and private harmony". As a singer, with Wood as her accompanist, she won praise from the critics.

Early 20th century

The promenade concerts flourished through the 1890s, but in 1902 Newman, who had been investing unwisely in theatrical presentations, found himself unable to bear the financial responsibility for the Queen's Hall Orchestra and was declared bankrupt. The concerts were rescued by the musical benefactor Sir Edgar Speyer, a banker of German origin. Speyer put up the necessary funds, retained Newman as manager of the concerts, and encouraged him and Wood to continue with their project of improving the public's taste. At the beginning of 1902, Wood accepted the conductorship of that year's Sheffield triennial festival. He continued to be associated with that festival until 1936, changing its emphasis from choral to orchestral pieces. A German critic, reviewing the festival for a Berlin publication, wrote, "Two personalities now represent a new epoch in English musical life – Edward Elgar as composer, and Henry J. Wood as conductor."

Later that year, overtaxed by his enormous workload, Wood's health broke down. Even though this was during the Proms season, Cathcart insisted that Wood should have a complete break and change of scene. Leaving the leader of the orchestra, Arthur Payne, to conduct during his absence, Wood and his wife took a cruise to Morocco, missing the Proms concerts from 13 October to 8 November.

In the early years of the Proms there were complaints in some musical journals that Wood was neglecting British music. In 1899, Newman unsuccessfully attempted to secure for Wood the premiere of Elgar's Enigma Variations, but in the same year Newman passed up the opportunity to introduce the music of Delius to London concertgoers. By the end of the first decade of the new century, however, Wood's reputation in conducting British music was in no doubt; he gave the world, British or London premieres of more than a hundred British works between 1900 and 1910. Meanwhile, he introduced his audiences to many European composers. In the 1903 season, he programmed symphonies by Bruckner (No. 7), Sibelius (No. 1), and Mahler (No. 1). In the same year, he introduced several of Richard Strauss's tone poems to London, and in 1905 he gave Strauss's Symphonia Domestica. This prompted the composer to write, "I cannot leave London without an expression of admiration for the splendid Orchestra which Henry Wood's master hand has created in such a short time."

Creating the orchestra admired by Strauss had not been achieved without a struggle. In 1904, Wood and Newman tackled the deputy system, in which orchestral players, if offered a better-paid engagement, could send a substitute to a rehearsal or a concert. The treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society described it thus: "A, whom you want, signs to play at your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to the first rehearsal. B, without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D, whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away." After a rehearsal in which Wood was faced with a sea of entirely unfamiliar faces in his own orchestra, Newman came on the platform to announce: "Gentlemen, in future there will be no deputies; good morning." Forty players resigned en bloc and formed their own orchestra: the London Symphony Orchestra. Wood bore no grudge and attended their first concert, although it was 12 years before he agreed to conduct the orchestra.

Wood had great sympathy for rank-and-file orchestral players and strove for improvements in their pay. He sought to raise their status and was the first British conductor to insist that the orchestra should stand to acknowledge applause along with the conductor. He introduced women into the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1913. He said, "I do not like ladies playing the trombone or double bass, but they can play the violin, and they do." By 1918 Wood had 14 women in his orchestra.

Wood conducted his own compositions and arrangements from time to time. He gave his Fantasia on Welsh Melodies and Fantasia on Scottish Melodies on successive nights in 1909. He composed the work for which he is most celebrated, Fantasia on British Sea Songs, for a concert in 1905, celebrating the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. It caught the public fancy immediately, with its mixture of sea-shanties, together with Handel's "See the Conquering Hero Comes" and Arne's "Rule, Britannia!" He played it at the Proms more than 40 times, and it became a fixture at the "Last Night of the Proms", the lively concert marking the end of each season. It remained so under his successors, though often rearranged, notably by Sir Malcolm Sargent. A highlight of the Fantasia is the hornpipe ("Jack's the Lad"); Wood said of it: They stamp their feet in time to the hornpipe – that is until I whip up the orchestra to a fierce accelerando which leaves behind all those whose stamping technique is not of the very finest quality. I like to win by two bars, if possible; but sometimes have to be content with a bar and a half. It is good fun, and I enjoy it as much as they.

Among Wood's other works was his Purcell Suite, incorporating themes from Purcell's stage works and string sonatas, which Wood performed at an orchestral festival in Zurich in 1921, and orchestral transcriptions of works by a range of composers from Albéniz to Vivaldi.

Wood worked with his wife for many concerts, and was her piano accompanist at her recitals. In 1906, at the Norwich music festival he presented Beethoven's Choral Symphony and Bach's St Matthew Passion, with his wife among the singers.

In December 1909, after a short illness, Olga Wood died. Cathcart took Wood away to take his mind off his loss. On his return, Wood resumed his professional routine, with the exception that, after Olga's death, he rarely performed as piano accompanist for anyone else; his skill in that art was greatly missed by the critics.

In June 1911, he married his secretary, Muriel Ellen Greatrex (1882–1967), with whom he had two daughters. In the same year he accepted a knighthood, and declined the conductorship of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in succession to Mahler, as he felt it his duty to devote himself to the British public.

Throughout the early part of the century, Wood was influential in changing the habits of concertgoers. Until then it had been customary for audiences at symphony or choral concerts to applaud after each movement or section. Wood discouraged this, sometime by gesture and sometimes by specific request printed in programmes. For this he was much praised in the musical and national press. In addition to his work at the Queen's Hall, Wood conducted at the Sheffield, Norwich, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Westmorland festivals, and at orchestral concerts in Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool, Leicester and Hull. His programming was summarised in The Manchester Guardian, which listed the number of each composer's works played in the 1911 Proms season; the top ten were: Wagner (121); Beethoven (34); Tchaikovsky (30); Mozart (28); Dvořák (16); Weber (16); J.S. Bach (14); Brahms (14); Elgar (14); and Liszt (13). The 1912 and 1913 Prom seasons are singled out by Cox as among the finest of this part of Wood's career. Among those conducting their own works or hearing Wood conduct them were Strauss, Debussy, Reger, Scriabin, and Rachmaninoff. Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra also received its first performance (the composer not being present); during rehearsals, Wood urged his players, "Stick to it, gentlemen! This is nothing to what you'll have to play in 25 years' time". The critic Ernest Newman wrote after the performance: "It is not often that an English audience hisses the music it does not like, but a good third of the people at Queen's Hall last Tuesday permitted themselves that luxury after the performance of the five orchestral pieces of Schoenberg. Another third of the audience was only not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third seemed too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss; so that on the whole it does not look as if Schoenberg has so far made many friends in London." However, when Wood invited Schoenberg himself to conduct the work's second British performance, on 17 January 1914, the composer was so delighted with the result, more appreciatively received than had been the premiere, that he congratulated Wood and the orchestra warmly: "I must say it was the first time since Gustav Mahler that I heard such music played again as a musician of culture demands."

First World War and post-war
On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Newman, Wood and Speyer discussed whether the Proms should continue as planned. They had by this time become an established institution, and it was agreed to go ahead. However, anti-German feeling forced Speyer to leave the country and seek refuge in the US, and there was a campaign to ban all German music from concerts. Newman put out a statement declaring that German music would be played as planned: "The greatest examples of Music and Art are world possessions and unassailable even by the prejudices and passions of the hour." When Speyer left Britain, the music publishers Chappell's took on the responsibility for the Queen's Hall and its orchestra. The Proms continued throughout the war years, with fewer major new works than before, although there were nevertheless British premieres of pieces by Bartók, Stravinsky and Debussy. An historian of the Proms, Ateş Orga, wrote, "Concerts often had to be re-timed to coincide with the 'All Clear' between air raids. Falling bombs, shrapnel, anti-aircraft fire and the droning of Zeppelins were ever threatening. But [Wood] kept things on the go and in the end had a very real part to play in boosting morale."

Towards the end of the war, Wood received an offer by which he was seriously tempted: the Boston Symphony Orchestra invited him to become its musical director. He had been guest conductor of the Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, but he regarded the Boston orchestra as the finest in the world. Nonetheless, as he told Boult, "it was hard to refuse, but I felt it was a patriotic duty to remain in my own country, at the present moment." After the war, the Proms continued much as before. The second halves of concerts still featured piano-accompanied songs rather than serious classical music. Chappell's, having taken over sponsorship of the Proms and spent £35,000 keeping the Queen's Hall going during the war, wished to promote songs published by the company. The management of Chappell's were also less enthusiastic than Wood and Newman about promoting new orchestral works, most of which were not profitable.

In 1921, Wood was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first English conductor to receive the honour. By now he was beginning to find his position as Britain's leading conductor under challenge from rising younger rivals. Thomas Beecham had been an increasingly influential figure since about 1910. He and Wood did not like one another, and each avoided mention of the other in his memoirs.

Adrian Boult, who, at Wood's recommendation, took over some of his responsibilities at Birmingham in 1923, always admired and respected Wood. Other younger conductors included men who had been members of Wood's orchestra, including Basil Cameron and Eugene Goossens. Another protégé of Wood was Malcolm Sargent, who appeared at the Proms as a composer-conductor in 1921 and 1922. Wood encouraged him to abandon thoughts of a career as a pianist and to concentrate on conducting. Wood further showed his interest in the future of music by taking on the conductorship of the student orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music in 1923, rehearsing it twice a week, whenever possible, for the next twenty years. In the same year, he accepted the conductorship of the amateur Hull Philharmonic Orchestra, travelling three times a year until 1939 to rehearse and conduct its concerts.

In 1925, Wood was invited to conduct four concerts for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. Such was their success, both artistic and financial, that Wood was invited back, and conducted again the following year. In addition to a large number of English pieces, Wood programmed works by composers as diverse as Bach and Stravinsky. He again conducted there in 1934.

BBC and the Proms
On his return to England from his first Hollywood trip, Wood found himself in the middle of a feud between the chairman of Chappell's, William Boosey, and the BBC. Boosey had conceived a passionate hostility to the broadcasting of music, fearing that it would lead to the end of live concerts. He attempted to prevent anyone who wished to perform at the Queen's Hall from broadcasting for the BBC. This affected many of the artists whom Wood and Newman needed for the Proms. The matter was unresolved when Newman died in 1926. Shortly afterwards, Boosey announced that Chappell's would no longer support concerts at the Queen's Hall. The prospect that the Proms might not be able to continue caused widespread dismay, and there was a general welcome for the BBC's announcement that it would take over the running of the Proms, and would also run a winter series of symphony concerts at the Queen's Hall.

The BBC regime brought immediate benefits. The use of the second half of concerts to promote Chappell's songs ceased, to be replaced by music chosen for its own excellence: on the first night under the BBC's control, the songs in the second half were by Schubert, Quilter and Parry rather than ballads from Chappell's. For Wood, the greatest benefit was that the BBC gave him twice as much rehearsal time as he had previously enjoyed. He now had a daily rehearsal and extra rehearsals as needed. He was also allowed extra players when large scores called for them, instead of having to rescore the work for the forces available.

In 1929, Wood played a celebrated practical joke on musicologists and critics. "I got very fed up with them, always finding fault with any arrangement or orchestrations that I made ... 'spoiling the original' etc. etc.", and so Wood passed off his own orchestration of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, as a transcription by a Russian composer called Paul Klenovsky. In Wood's later account, the press and the BBC "fell into the trap and said the scoring was wonderful, Klenovsky had the real flare [sic] for true colour etc. – and performance after performance was given and asked for." Wood kept the secret for five years before revealing the truth. The press treated the deception as a great joke; The Times entered into the spirit of it with a jocular tribute to the lamented Klenovsky.

As Wood's working life took a turn for the better, his domestic life started to deteriorate. During the early 1930s, he and his wife gradually became estranged, and their relationship ended in bitterness, with Muriel taking most of Wood's money and, for much of the time, living abroad. She refused to divorce him. The breach between Muriel and Wood also caused his estrangement from their daughters. In 1934 he began a happy relationship with a widowed former pupil, Jessie Linton, who had sung for him frequently in the past under her professional name of Jessie Goldsack. One of Wood's players recalled, "She changed him. He had been badly dressed, awful clothes. Jessie got him a new evening suit, instead of the mouldy green one, and he flourished yellow gloves and a cigar ... he became human." As Wood was not free to remarry, she changed her name by deed poll to "Lady Jessie Wood" and was generally assumed by the public to be Wood's wife. In his memoirs, Wood mentioned neither his second marriage nor his subsequent relationship.

In his later years, Wood came to be identified with the Proms rather than with the year-round concert season. Boult was appointed director of music at the BBC in 1930. In that capacity he strove to ensure that Wood was invited to conduct a fitting number of BBC symphony concerts outside the Prom season. The BBC chose Wood for important collaborations with Bartók and Paul Hindemith, and for the first British performance of Mahler's vast Symphony No. 8. But Jacobs notes that, in the general concert repertory, Wood now had to compete against well-known foreign conductors such as Bruno Walter, Willem Mengelberg, and Arturo Toscanini, "in comparison with whom he was increasingly seen as a workhorse".

Last years
In 1936, Wood was in charge of his final Sheffield festival. The choral works he conducted included the Verdi Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Berlioz' Te Deum, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, and, in the presence of the composer, Rachmaninoff's The Bells. The following year, Wood began planning for a grand concert to mark his fiftieth year as a conductor. The Royal Albert Hall was chosen as the venue, having a far larger capacity than the Queen's Hall. The concert was given on 5 October 1938. Rachmaninoff played the solo part in his Second Piano Concerto, and Vaughan Williams, at Wood's request, composed a short choral work for the occasion: the Serenade to Music for orchestra and 16 soloists. The other composers represented in the programme were Sullivan, Beethoven, Bach, Bax, Wagner, Handel and Elgar. The orchestra comprised players from the three London orchestras: the London Symphony, London Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The concert raised £9,000 for Wood's chosen charity, providing health care for musicians. In the same year, Wood published his autobiography, My Life of Music.

In September 1939, the Second World War broke out and the BBC immediately put into effect its contingency plans to move much of its broadcasting away from London to places thought less susceptible to bombing. Its musical activities, including the orchestra, moved to Bristol. The BBC withdrew not only the players, but financial support from the Proms. Wood determined that the 1940 season would nevertheless go ahead. The Royal Philharmonic Society and a private entrepreneur, Keith Douglas, agreed to back an eight-week season, and the London Symphony Orchestra was engaged. The season was curtailed after four weeks, when intense bombing forced the Queen's Hall to close. The last Prom given at the Queen's Hall was on 7 September 1940. In May 1941, the hall was destroyed by bombs.

It was immediately agreed that the 1941 season of Proms should be held at the Albert Hall. It was twice the size of the Queen's Hall, with poor acoustics, but a six-week series was judged a success, and the Albert Hall remained the home of the Proms. Wood, aged seventy-two, was persuaded to have an associate conductor to relieve him of some of the burden. Basil Cameron undertook the task and remained a Prom conductor until his retirement, aged eighty, in 1964. The BBC brought its symphony orchestra back to London and resumed its backing of the Proms in 1942; Boult joined Cameron as Wood's associate conductor during that season. In early 1943, Wood's health deteriorated, and two days after the start of that year's season, he collapsed and was ordered to have a month in bed. Despite wartime vicissitudes, the 1943 season sold nearly 250,000 tickets, with an average audience of about 4,000 – many more than could have fitted into the Queen's Hall.

Despite his age and the difficulties of wartime travel, Wood insisted on going to provincial cities to conduct – as much, according to Jacobs, to help the local orchestras survive as to gratify audiences. His final season was in 1944. The season began well with Wood in good form, but after three weeks raids by the devastating new German flying bombs caused the government to order the closure of places of entertainment. The Proms were immediately relocated to Bedford some 50 mi away, where Wood continued to conduct. He was taken ill in early August and was unable to conduct the fiftieth anniversary Prom on 10 August; he was forbidden by his doctor even to listen to its broadcast. Wood died just over a week later on 19 August at Hitchin Hospital in Hitchin, Hertfordshire; his funeral service was held in the town at St Mary's church, and his ashes were interred in the Musicians' Chapel of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate.

His arrangement of the national anthem was continued for the Last Night of the Proms until 2009, when Benjamin Britten’s arrangement replaced it in 2010. In 2022, the American Philadelphia Orchestra played Wood's arrangement of the national anthem out of respect for the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II. Wood’s arrangement was bought back in 2023 for closing night, and in the future closing nights of years yet to come.

Recordings
Wood's recording career began in 1908, when he accompanied his wife Olga in "Farewell, forests" by Tchaikovsky, for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company, better known as His Master's Voice or HMV. They made eight other records together for HMV over the next two years. After Olga's death, Wood signed a contract with HMV's rival, Columbia, for whom he made a series of discs between 1915 and 1917 with the singer Clara Butt, including excerpts from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.

Between 1915 and 1925, he conducted 65 recordings for Columbia using the early acoustic recording process, including many discs of Wagner excerpts and a truncated version of Elgar's Violin Concerto with Albert Sammons as soloist. When the microphone and electrical recording were introduced in 1925, Wood re-recorded the Elgar concerto, with Sammons, and made 36 other discs for Columbia over the next nine years. The 1929 recording of the Elgar concerto has been reissued on compact disc and is well regarded by some critics.

Wood was wooed from Columbia by the young Decca company in 1935. For Decca he conducted 23 recordings over the next two years, including Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Elgar's Enigma Variations and Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony. In 1938 he returned to Columbia, for whom his five new recordings included the Serenade to Music with the 16 original singers, a few days after the premiere, and his own Fantasia on British Sea Songs.

Wood's recordings did not remain in the catalogues long after his death. The Record Guide, 1956, lists none of his records. A few of his recordings have subsequently been reissued on compact disc, including the Decca and Columbia Vaughan Williams recordings from 1936 and 1938.

Premieres
In Jacobs's 1994 biography, the list of premieres conducted by Wood extends to 18 pages. His world premieres included Frank Bridge's The Sea; Britten's Piano Concerto; Delius's A Song Before Sunrise, A Song of Summer, and Idyll; Elgar's The Wand of Youth Suite No. 1, Sospiri and the 4th and 5th Pomp and Circumstance Marches; and Vaughan Williams's Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1, Flos Campi and Serenade to Music.

Wood's UK premieres included Bartók's Dance Suite; Chabrier's Joyeuse marche; Copland's Billy the Kid; Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Ibéria; Hindemith's Kammermusik 2 and 5; Janáček's Sinfonietta, Taras Bulba and Glagolitic Mass; Kodály's Dances from Galanta; Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 4, 7 and 8, and Das Lied von der Erde; Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Violin Concerto No. 2; Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 1; Ravel's Ma mère l'oye, Rapsodie espagnole, La valse and Piano Concerto in D; Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, Scheherazade, and Symphony No. 2; Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals; Schumann's Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra; Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8; Sibelius's Symphonies Nos. 1, 6 and 7, Violin Concerto, Karelia Suite, and Tapiola; Richard Strauss's Symphonia Domestica; Stravinsky's The Firebird (suite); Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony and Nutcracker Suite; and Webern's Passacaglia.

Honours, memorials and reputation
In addition to the knighthood bestowed in 1911, Wood's state honours were his appointments as Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in the 1944 King's Birthday Honours List, to the Order of the Crown (Belgium; 1920), and Officer of the Legion of Honour (France; 1926). He received honorary doctorates from five English universities and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Music (1920) and the Royal College of Music (1923). In March 1963, The Henry Wood Concert Society (in association with The Henry Wood Memorial Trust) presented The Henry Wood Memorial Concert. The concert was held at the Royal Albert Hall, London and conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent in the presence of H.R.H. The Duchess of Gloucester.

Jacobs lists 26 compositions dedicated to Wood, including, in addition to the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, works by Elgar, Delius, Bax, Marcel Dupré and Walton. The Poet Laureate, John Masefield, composed a poem of six verses in his honour, entitled "Sir Henry Wood", often referred to by its first line, "Where does the uttered music go?". Walton set it to music as an anthem for mixed choir; it received its first performance on 26 April 1946 at St Sepulchre's, on the occasion of a ceremony unveiling a memorial stained-glass window in Wood's honour.

Wood is commemorated in the name of the Henry Wood Hall, the deconsecrated Holy Trinity Church in Southwark, which was converted to a rehearsal and recording venue in 1975. His bust stands upstage centre in the Royal Albert Hall during the whole of each Prom season, decorated by a chaplet on the Last Night of the Proms. His collection of 2,800 orchestral scores and 1,920 sets of parts is now in the library of the Royal Academy of Music. For the Academy he also established the Henry Wood Fund, giving financial aid to students. The University of Strathclyde named a building at its Jordanhill campus after him. His best-known memorial is the Proms, officially "the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", but universally referred to by the informal short version.

His biographer Arthur Jacobs wrote of Wood: His orchestral players affectionately nicknamed him "Timber" – more than a play on his name, since it seemed to represent his reliability too. His tally of first performances, or first performances in Britain, was heroic: at least 717 works by 357 composers. Greatness as measured by finesse of execution may not be his, particularly in his limited legacy of recordings, but he remains one of the most remarkable musicians Britain has produced.

Notes and references
Notes

References

title: Henry Wood


text:
Henry Wood (disambiguation)

Henry Wood (1869–1944) was an English conductor.

Henry Wood may also refer to:
 * Henry Wood (cricketer, born 1853) (1853–1919), English cricketer
 * Henry Wood (Somerset cricketer) (1872–1950)
 * Henry Wise Wood (1860–1941), Alberta politician
 * Henry Wood (architect), architect of Ashton Court outbuildings (1805)
 * Sir Henry Wood, 1st Baronet (1597–1671), Member of Parliament of England for Hythe 1661–71
 * Henry Wood (minstrel), 19th-century New York City minstrel show manager
 * Henry A. Wise Wood (1866–1939), American inventor
 * Henry Conwell Wood (1840–1926), member of the Queensland Legislative Council
 * Henry Moses Wood (1788–1867), architect based in Nottingham
 * Henry Clay Wood (1832–1918), American Civil War general
 * Henry Walter Wood (1825–1869), English architect
 * Evelyn Wood (British Army officer) (Henry Evelyn Wood, 1838–1919), British field marshal and Victoria Cross recipient
 * Henry Wood (scholar) (1849–1925), American Professor of German Studies
 * Ellen Wood (author) (1814–1887), writing as Mrs Henry Wood, English novelist
 * Henry Wood, a fictional character in The Adventure of the Crooked Man, a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle
 * Harry Harvey Wood (1903–1977) founder of the Edinburgh Festival

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Henry Wood (disambiguation)


text:
Johann Jakob Griesbach

Johann Jakob Griesbach (4 January 1745 – 24 March 1812) was a German biblical textual critic. Griesbach's fame rests upon his work in New Testament criticism, in which he inaugurated a new epoch. His solution to the synoptic problem bears his name, but the Griesbach hypothesis has become, in modern times, known as the Two-Gospel hypothesis.

Education and career
He was born at Butzbach, a small town in the state of Hesse-Darmstadt, where his father, Konrad Kaspar (1705–1777), was pastor. Griesbach was educated at Frankfurt, and at the universities of Tübingen, Leipzig and Halle, where he became one of J. S. Semler's most ardent disciples. It was Semler who induced him to turn his attention to the textual criticism of the New Testament. At the close of his undergraduate career he undertook a literary tour through Germany, the Netherlands, France and England. In England he may have met Henry Owen whose seminal work Observations on the Four Gospels (1764) is listed among the books of Griesbach's estate, although he does not seem to have acknowledged any indebtedness to Owen.

On his return to Halle, Griesbach acted for some time as Privatdozent, but in 1773 was appointed to a professorial chair; in 1775 he went to the University of Jena, where he spent the rest of his life (though he received calls to other universities).

New Testament text critic
Griesbach's critical edition of the New Testament first appeared at Halle, in three volumes, in 1774–1775. The first volume contained the first three Gospels, synoptically arranged; the second, the Epistles and the book of Revelation. All the historical books were reprinted in one volume in 1777, the synoptical arrangement of the Gospels having been abandoned as inconvenient. Of the second edition, considerably enlarged and improved, the first volume appeared in 1796 and the second in 1806 (Halle and London). Of a third edition, edited by David Schulz, only the first volume, containing the four Gospels, appeared (1827).

For the construction of his critical text Griesbach took as his basis the Elzevir edition. Where he differed from it he placed the Elzevir reading on the inner margin along with other readings he thought worthy of special consideration (these last, however, being printed in smaller type). To all the readings on this margin he attached special marks indicating the precise degree of probability in his opinion attaching to each. In weighing these probabilities he proceeded upon a particular theory which in its leading features he had derived from J. A. Bengel and J. S. Semler, dividing all the manuscripts into three main groups – the Alexandrian, the Western and the Byzantine.

A reading supported by only one recension he considered as having only one witness in its favour; those readings which were supported by all the three recensions, or even by two of them, especially if these two were the Alexandrian and the Western, he unhesitatingly accepted as genuine. Only when each of the three recensions gives a different reading does he proceed to discuss the question on other grounds.

See his Symbolae criticae ad supplendas et corrigendas variarum N. T. lectionum collectiones (Halle, 1785, 1793), and his Commentarius criticus in textum Graecum N. T., which extends to the end of Mark and discusses the more important various readings with great care and thoroughness (Jena, 1794 if.).

Among the other works of Griesbach (which are comparatively unimportant) may be mentioned his university thesis De codicibus quatuor evangeliorum Origenianis (Halle, 1771) and a work upon systematic theology (Anleitung zur Kenntniss der populären Dogmatik, Jena, 1779). His Opuscula, consisting chiefly of university "Programs" and addresses, were edited by Gabler (2 volumes, Jena, 1824).

Gospel Synopsis
In 1776 Griesbach published his Greek Gospel synopsis of Matthew, Mark and Luke as a volume separate from his critical edition of the New Testament (cf. above), of which it had previously been a part, and thereby established the tool of a synopsis as an essential research aid in New Testament studies.

For Griesbach's hypothesis concerning the interrelation of the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and its modern variant, see Griesbach hypothesis.

Johann Jakob Griesbach Bicentenary Colloquium 1776-1976
To mark the bicentenary of the publication of Griesbach's Gospel synopsis as a separate volume a group of distinguished international biblical scholars met in July 1976 at Münster/Westphalia for The Johann Jakob Griesbach Bicentenary Colloquium 1776-1976.

A selection of the papers presented at the colloquium appraising Griesbach's life, work and influence, aimed "to indicate why an understanding of this scholar's contribution to New Testament criticism is important both for the history of New Testament scholarship and for contemporary research", together with the text in Latin and in English translation of The Dissertation of J. J. Griesbach, Doctor of Theology and Principal Professor in the University of Jena, in which he demonstrates that the entire Gospel of Mark has been extracted from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written in the name of the University of Jena (1789–1790), now revised and furnished with many additions, are to be found in Bernard Orchard and Thomas R. W. Longstaff (ed.), J. J. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text-Critical Studies 1776-1976, Volume 34 in the SNTS Monograph Series (Cambridge University Press, hardback 1978, paperback 2005 ISBN 0-521-02055-7).

Works

 * Hē kainē diathēkē: Novum Testamentum Graece. Cura Leusdenii et Griesbachii (1817)
 * Hē Kainē Diathēkē: Novum Testamentum Graece. Cura Leusdenii et Griesbachii (1823)
 * The four Gospels of the New Testament, in Greek, from the text of Griesbach (1825)
 * Hē Kainē Diathēkē: Novum Testamentum Graece. Cura Leusdenii et Griesbachii (1823)
 * The four Gospels of the New Testament, in Greek, from the text of Griesbach (1825)
 * The four Gospels of the New Testament, in Greek, from the text of Griesbach (1825)

title: Johann Jakob Griesbach


text:
Talk:Lord Mountbatten

"Lust for young men" article in The Times
I've added the link:

Under further reading.

The above is just a book review. The book is THE MOUNTBATTENS: Their Lives and Loves by Andrew Lownie at http://www.themountbattens.com/ This is obviously going to be controversial and a long term discussion. I have no taste for either right now, but figure that the conversation should get started.

Smallbones( smalltalk ) 12:42, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

 * Slightly ahead of you here. It's already in reliable sources so I'd say it already belongs in the article. Happy to discuss, of course. --The Huhsz (talk) 13:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * A slight disconnect between source and what we have in the article; Source says bisexual, article says homosexual, source says "young men", article says boys. Is there a source for "predatory"? This all seems to be in The Sun and Daily Mail articles, but I don't think they are considered reliable. (Hohum @ ) 13:40, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

 * "She stated that Lord Louis Mountbatten was known to be a homosexual with a perversion for young boys." "One of the lost letters had been sent to him by a man who claimed Mountbatten had tried to seduce him when he was 17." and "Tom said Mountbatten had something of a fetish for uniforms — handsome young men in military uniforms (with high boots) and beautiful boys in school uniform." were what I was thinking of. Suggest a reword? --The Huhsz (talk) 13:56, 18 August 2019 (UTC) added: I changed "boys" to "young men"; you're right, that is fairer. --The Huhsz (talk) 14:19, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

 * This section of the article seems out of place in the "marriage" section. Perhaps a new section "Allegations of sexual offenses"? It's also somewhat rambling, and possibly of WP:UNDUE length given that it's all based on one source, the book by Lownie. (Hohum @ ) 00:48, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

 * Agreed. It needs both moving and pruning. Dormskirk (talk) 10:30, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

 * Allegations of homosexuality and abuse of children were stored together here, which is inappropriate. Sexual abuse of children is not a sexuality. I've split the allegations of homosexuality from the claims of sexual abuse of children, each in their own subsections. I used "abuse" rather than "offenses" as suggested above as at the time homosexuality was a sexual offence. MatthewWilkes (talk) 13:32, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

The FBI dossier is explicit in naming his preference as “boys”. Only Rupert Murdoch’s Times attempted to pass off Mountbatten’s paedophilia as merely "Lust for young men". --91.54.1.150 (talk) 12:32, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

 * An FBI dossier can include all sorts of reports from witnesses and interviewees of varying reliability. Their presence in a file doesn't necessarily mean the FBI believes them. They will often to meet WP:RS.
 * — A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 23:04, 5 May 2023 (UTC) A. B. (talk • contribs •  global count) 23:04, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Allegations of sexual abuse
I am intrigued by the comment "These claims were dismissed[who?] at the time" which editors cite to Andrew Lownie's article in the times of 7 November 2017 and Chris Moore's book "The Kincora Scandal". Both these works seem to be promoting the allegations but neither of them seem to be dismissing them. This little sentence needs a better source. Dormskirk (talk) 09:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The allegations were rejected by Historical Institution Abuse Inquiry and I have added properly sourced information which I hope readers will find useful. Dormskirk (talk) 10:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This entire section in the article reads as being rather homophobic, honestly. Tabruns2021 (talk) 17:11, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed I lack the ability to do it but there should be two headings: Sexuality and (Allegations of) Child sexual abuse. 51.6.121.6 (talk) 22:11, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Please do not resurrect old threads, start a new one if you must. DuncanHill (talk) 22:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

"His Excellency"
No evidence was provided that this title continued after his term in office. FDW777 (talk) 13:41, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, I did add provide evidence with the following source from the offical website of the National Assembly of Pakistan: But this was then removed with the comment that no evidence was given. Kinda circular reasoning, huh? Could you please explain why this source was removed or was not good enough? Mr. D. E. Mophon (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @User talk:Mr. D. E. Mophon I agree with you, but what we can do about it? Wikipedia is not fair, nor does it try to be. Maybe you should report it to WP:ANI? But in the meantime relax. Stress is not your friend. 85.193.252.19 (talk) 03:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * My error, edit restored. Sciencefish (talk) 09:06, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

 * I repeat, no evidence was provided that this title continued after his term in office (my emphasis). FDW777 (talk) 09:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

 * Also where is the evidence that a) Highest honorific prefixes and titles are included in Infobox, and b) "His excellency" (if correct in the first place) is highest? FDW777 (talk) 09:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with FDW777, he wasn't 'His Excellency the Earl Mountbatten of Burma'. He was created Earl Mountbatten of Burma after leaving office. This construction takes a style from one period of his life and puts it together with a title from a different period of his life. It's like writing 'His Serene Highness the Viscount Mountbatten of Burma'. Celia Homeford (talk) 14:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Concerns
I do not have access to the sources but there are some concerns to consider. "When India and Pakistan attained independence at midnight of 14–15 August 1947, Mountbatten was alone in his study at the Viceroy's house saying to himself just before the clock struck midnight that for still a few minutes, he was the most powerful man on Earth."
 * Currently the 6th paragraph of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma section:
 * He was alone in his study and was saying to himself. The only way this could be known is from his writing or notes so conveys some confusion and needs rewording as from the source or better sourcing.

"Accounts differ on the future which Mountbatten desired for Kashmir."
 * The 7th paragraph states:
 * This begs a (accounts) tag.

"Pakistani accounts suggest that Mountbatten favoured the accession of Kashmir to India, citing his close relationship to Nehru. Mountbatten's own account says that he simply wanted the maharaja, Hari Singh, to make up his mind."
 * The same paragraph:
 * Pakistani accounts and Mountbatton's own account use the same three pages from Schofield (2010), pp. 29–31, and it seems this could be narrowed to which page supports the content. --  Otr500 (talk) 10:25, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Sexuality subheading
regarding this reversion: Having the subheading refer to the accusations does not gave credence to them. I changed it to "Sexuality and pedophilia accusations", not "Sexuality and pedophilia". Many Wikipedia articles on people who have been accused of sexual abuse in one form or another have subheadings that mention it. A subheading should let you know what is in the section. Just "Sexuality" certainly does not "cover it" given the section details his alleged homosexuality and his alleged pedophilia. It also suggests that allegedly being a pedophile is part of his sexuality. As it is, the section is homophobic. Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 14:56, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Headings are supposed to succinctly (a) give an overview of the article and (b) guide the reader looking for something specific to the right section. While the alleged pedophilia may not be "part" of his sexuality, it's certainly related -- that's why they're in the same section. And someone who has, perhaps, heard of the pedophilia question will correctly suppose the a "Sexuality" section will address it. The one word performs both functions without calling out one particular aspect in particular, as if it's especially important. EEng 17:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Exactly: the section is on alleged homosexuality and pedophilia, so an overview should mention both, and if the reader is specifically looking for the pedophilia accusations then a more specific subheading would be more appropriate. Mountbatten may only be alleged to have abused boys, but pedophilia is not related to homosexuality. (Also, people who have heard pedophilia rumours about him would not necessarily suppose a sexuality section would address it – I, for example, had heard he was an alleged pedophile but not that he was allegedly gay before I first read this article.) Using just the word "Sexuality" as the subheading appears to conflate homosexuality and pedophilia together. The section comes across as homophobic and the last part of your comment reads as if you don't think pedophilia accusations are important. Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 18:58, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I think putting the paedophilia allegations into the section heading gives them too much WP:WEIGHT. DuncanHill (talk) 19:20, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Exactly. EEng 19:43, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Disagree. I think it's due and not including it buries it. Many articles with people accused but not convicted of similar include subheadings mentioning it, e.g. Edward Heath ("Allegations of child sexual abuse"), Peter Morrison ("Allegations of child abuse"). Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 21:23, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It's not buried, it's there in the article for anyone to read. DuncanHill (talk) 21:32, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * And as for the Heath and Morrison articles, different articles have different needs. In both those cases, those are separate sections on  only the sexual abuse allegations, so naturally those sections' headings will reflect that. EEng 22:54, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm gay myself so I suggest you give the homophobia bullshit a rest. EEng 19:43, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * That doesn't dispute any point I made. Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 21:23, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * How about your claim that the Sexuality section is homophobic? I too am gay and I too wish you would give the homophobia bullshit a rest. DuncanHill (talk) 21:32, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * And we queens are just not in the mood given recent events. EEng 22:37, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Child sexual abuse is not about sexuality. It is about violent crime. You wouldn’t put general rape allegations here; you would give them a prominent heading. Being attracted to another consenting adult is sexuality. Being attracted to children is a recognised illness. The two should be separated. 51.6.121.6 (talk) 22:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Please do not resurrect old threads, start a new one if you must

Request for comment
Should the title of the "Sexuality" section be renamed to include mention of the pedophilia accusations? Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 21:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

 * Yes: I think it should be changed to something such as "Sexuality and pedophilia accusations". Other articles with similar allegations have it mentioned in the subheading, and I think that it just reading "Sexuality" when the section details his alleged homosexuality and pedophilia conflates the two together. Abbyjjjj96 (talk) 21:31, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Homosexuality (alleged or actual) is an aspect of "sexuality". Pedophilia (alleged or actual) is an aspect of "sexuality". Including them both under "sexuality" doesn't conflate anything. EEng 22:43, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The issue then is, some may see putting paedophillia in the sexuality section as validating it as part of the LGBTQ+. I support the Sexual Allegations proposal, as neither can be proven and it avoids the afforementioned issue. EmilySarah99 (talk) 09:13, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No for the reasons stated in the prior subsection. Plus opening an RfC because you're not getting your way about a section heading after 6 whole hours is a selfish waste of community time. EEng 22:37, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No. In addition to the reasons already stated, headings should be as concise as possible, and I see no compelling reason to lengthen this one. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:19, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, maybe to "Sexual allegations". His sexuality isn't black and white seeing as he was married with issue, and the allegations aren't 100% confirmed.--Ortizesp (talk) 13:56, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * So you propose that we report the subject's potential homosexuality under the heading of "Sexuality allegations"? Better watch out before someone labels you homophobic! EEng 18:52, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * P.S. And it's not that the rumors "aren't 100% confirmed" -- they're 0% confirmed. EEng 00:26, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No. What do you propose that the title be changed to? Personally, I don't see how the sexuality of a person has bearing on any illegal/unusual propensities of that person. Historically, persons who practice Paedophilia and it's associated behaviours are spread over the whole 'spectrum' of sexuality and thus Paedophilia does not 'favour' one type of sexual inclination over the other. I don't see how your request could be fulfilled in any way. But, this is just my opinion in this regard''' BenBrownBoy BenBrownBoy (Aye?) 21:40, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No - As the previous comments already make clear, such a change would serve little purpose other than muddying the waters and giving rise to further controversy among editors. PraiseVivec (talk) 14:23, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No Doing so does not improve the article. Always be very cautious when dealing with any new content in a BLP pertaining to "accusations." Before wordsmithing a headline, it is imperative that we have vetted the sources as iron-clad AND that the new content bears weight for inclusion: MOS:BLP, MOS:UNDUE, MOS:RELIABLEKerdooskis (talk) 21:36, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No: doing so would lend the accusations, which are hearsay at best and not under investigation or the subject of a civil case, an undue weight which they do not deserve. Celia Homeford (talk) 11:34, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No Homosexuality (alleged or actual) is an aspect of "sexuality". Pedophilia (alleged or actual) is an aspect of "sexuality". Including them both under "sexuality" doesn't conflate anything per EEng and specifically this text conflates nothing and many allegations iro young boys appear to be particularly tenuous and hearsay.Pincrete (talk) 18:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * No, as per all the above comments. If anything it should be changed to something like "Homosexuality", "Alleged Homosexuality", or "Homosexual Paedophilia". I could even get behind calling it pederasty, but I imagine others would not want to, as that term is not used there right now is it. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 12:41, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Legacy
Proposal: Add at the beginning of the section headed “Legacy” the following:

Mountbatten’s legacy has remained largely positive amongst the general public, despite the numerous allegations of child sexual abuse made against him, including by his victims.

Explanation: Added content. The multiple and widespread allegations are referred to above under heading “Sexuality”. Should be repeated at top of legacy, as this is the most important aspect of his legacy from a public interest / historical perspective.

Request: I would welcome engagement here. I made the edit but it was removed and I was understandably pointed towards Talk. It is an important edit, so I invite comment first as requested by the deleter. 51.6.121.6 (talk) 22:23, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You need at least one very high quality citation that supports the claim that his legacy is largely positive. I also don't think we should call his accusers "victims" as that would imply that the allegations are true, but they are not proven. I also take issue with this being the most important aspect of his legacy. The most important aspect of his legacy is the independence and partition of India. Celia Homeford (talk) 13:02, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Archiving again
I have archived threads up to the end of 2021, that is to say with no activity after that date. They are at Talk:Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma/Archive 2. DuncanHill (talk) 22:30, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Name
With no discussion, an IP changed the order of his name to put Albert first based on some supposed citation to Queen Victoria's letters or diary. Even if this is a legitimate citation, a reference to one primary source should not supersede the multitude of reference works which list his name the other way (the ODNB, Britannica, Cracroft's peerage, New York Times, etc.). Wikipedia's been spreading misinformation for over a year, this is frustrating. john k (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 20 June 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved to Lord Mountbatten. Although this discussion resulted in a clear consensus against the original proposal for, the title "Lord Mountbatten" was also proposed in the discussion and attracted several arguments in its favor. It was argued that Lord Mountbatten is the figure's WP:COMMONNAME, as well as more WP:CONCISE. It was also argued that this figure was overwhelmingly the best known figure to hold the "Lord Mountbatten" title, thus making the standalone title preferable under WP:NCPEER. The principal opposition to "Lord Mountbatten" came on the grounds of WP:CONSISTENT: specifically, it was argued that the article title should be consistent with other holders of the "Earl Mountbatten" title, or with other British peers more broadly. Though this argument is a sound one, the arguments in favor of "Lord Mountbatten" were grounded in a wider range of policy, leading me to find a consensus to adopt Lord Mountbatten. (closed by non-admin page mover) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:05, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma → Louis Mountbatten – Move to match policy. WP:COMMONNAME is most certainly not the tortuous and tautological "Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma". WP:NCBRITPEER states [use the title except] for 1), and also 2) Lord Louis Mountbatten would also be an acceptable title. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 11:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

 * I don't think Louis Mountbatten is the common name. If we do want to go down that route then just Mountbatten would be where we end up. Lord Louis Mountbatten would be fine if we were editing before 1946. DuncanHill (talk) 13:47, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * For convenience, here is a link to the previous discussion - Talk:Louis_Mountbatten,_1st_Earl_Mountbatten_of_Burma/Archive_1. DuncanHill (talk) 10:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Move to Lord Mountbatten (which redirects here). Common name per a Google Scholar/Books search for mountbatten. Precedent in RMs for Lord Byron (2010), Lady Gregory (2021), Lord Dunsany (2021), and Lord Kelvin (2023). Hameltion (talk | contribs) 16:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Lord Mountbatten seems to be the better title per internet sources used on the article. Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 07:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose Mountbatten is best known by his title and we shouldn't follow bad precedents. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:01, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Is he, though? The only place I've ever seen his full title (with the tautoligical inclusion of his surname, and 'Burma') is here, on this article, and the one about his murder. Otherwise - as shown by Ngrams - he's best know as Lord Mountbatten or Lord Louis Mountbatten. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:01, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The title is "Mountbatten of Burma", it's done like that for a reason. DuncanHill (talk) 17:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support Lord Mountbatten per above.--Ortizesp (talk) 12:48, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Weak support Lord Mountbatten, per ngrams estar8806 (talk) ★ 15:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose The name is perfectly recognizable and moving it would only disrupt the consistency with the pages on his successors, namely Patricia Knatchbull, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma and Norton Knatchbull, 3rd Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Keivan.f  Talk 16:37, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Support, more WP:CONCISE and still recognizable and WP:COMMONNAME. I would also suggest renaming Patricia Knatchbull similarly as she is also the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC there though Norton Knatchbull needs more disamb so it should stay as is or be shortened to Norton Knatchbull, Earl Mountbatten of Burma.  EmeraldRange  (talk/contribs) 01:05, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Louis Mountbatten alone is not his common name as has been pointed out above. Keivan.f  Talk 02:46, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah yup, didn't clarify, support moving to Lord Mountbatten not Louis  EmeraldRange  (talk/contribs) 03:11, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

 * Oppose Keeping the article title at its current location ensures clarity, and consistency with the articles on his father and daughter. Векочел (talk) 20:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Given the competing concerns (redundancy, consistency, concision, precision, honorifics, common name), I think it best to leave it alone. Srnec (talk) 03:29, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NCPEER. He was never referred to as Louis Mountbatten. He was referred to as Lord Louis Mountbatten until he received a peerage, but that title is completely incorrect thereafter. He is commonly referred to as Lord Mountbatten, but almost every peer is commonly referred to as "Lord So-and-So"; it's no different from someone being commonly referred to as "Professor So-and-So", "Mr So-and-So" or "Sir So-and-So", and I presume you're not advocating that we should move every article to that common a name! -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:06, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You are absolutely correct, I am not advocating that argumentum ad absurdum. I am advocating we call the article either Louis Mountbatten or Lord Louis Mountbatten, per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NCPEER. Lord Mountbatten would also be acceptable. The extra disambiguation is tautological and unnecessary. We write for readers; do reader really come here and enter "Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma" into the search box? Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 22:44, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * So, are you advocating that all peers should be moved to their personal names? Or just this one? Because if the former, this is certainly not the forum to do it. And if the latter, why just him? As I said, Lord Louis Mountbatten is entirely incorrect after he was ennobled. Incidentally, it's not tautological at all. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Where did I suggest that all peers should be moved to their personal names? (I mean, yes, they should be, unless they need disambiguation, but I've not proposed that anywhere, and won't, because life is too short.) Why him? As I explained in my nomination, to follow WP:NCBRITPEER: Use the title except Maybe you don't think "Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten" is tautological, maybe it isn't in the strictest sense of the word, but it's certainly silly, repetitive, and not what someone will type into a search engine. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I can understand that rationale for Lord Mountbatten, but not Louis Mountbatten (which was your actual proposal), which he is almost never known as, or the entirely incorrect Lord Louis Mountbatten. I would point out that Byron and a handful of others (usually authors) are exceptions; many peerage titles have a single individual who is best-known (e.g. Duke of Wellington, Lord Salisbury), but we still use their full name and title, usually with a redirect from the title as here. When a system works perfectly well there is no need to change it, especially not article by article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:21, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support move to Lord Mountbatten. Most likely search term for a reader. Seltaeb Eht (talk) 15:13, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Lord Mountbatten


text:
Eurovision Song Contest 1961

The Eurovision Song Contest 1961 was the 6th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. Once again, the contest was held in the French seaside city of Cannes, having also hosted the. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF), the contest was again held at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès on Saturday 18 March 1961, becoming the first contest to take place on a Saturday evening, a tradition that has continued ever since (with the exception of 1962). The show was directed by Marcel Cravenne and again hosted by Jacqueline Joubert, who had also hosted in 1959.

Sixteen countries participated in the contest - three more than in the previous edition;, and  all competed for the first time this year.

The winner was with the song "Nous les amoureux", performed by Jean-Claude Pascal, written by Maurice Vidalin, and composed by Jacques Datin, with the  finishing in second place for the third consecutive year.

Location
The event took place in Cannes, France, following the nation's victory at the 1960 edition with the song "Tom Pillibi", performed by Jacqueline Boyer. The selected venue was the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, built in 1949 to host the Cannes Film Festival and located on the Promenade de la Croisette along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Due to the growth in the film festival a new building bearing the same name was opened in 1982, with the original building renamed as the Palais Croisette and subsequently demolished in 1988. It also hosted the edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Participating countries
Interest in the competition began to grow across Europe as three new countries participated for the first time: Finland, Spain, and Yugoslavia.

Both 's Bob Benny and 's Nora Brockstedt made their second appearances at the contest; Benny had previously represented Belgium in the with the song "Hou toch van mij", while Brockstedt represented Norway for the second consecutive year, having performed "Voi Voi" the previous year.

Production
Marcel Cravenne directed the show, the director of photography was Maurice Barry (cinematographer). Roger Valat served as technical director. Six TV cameras were used, including one showing the Mediterranean sea and the outside of the venue during the first seconds of the show.

Like in 1959, the stage was designed by Gérard Dubois. It was notably larger than in previous years and featured a central staircase decorated with flowers, leading up to a terrace flanked by trees, so that the entire stage gave the impression of a Mediterranean garden. Dubois first made a scale model of the stage in Paris, then went to Cannes and chose the trees together with André Racot, head of the Cannes municipal gardens, paying attention that the trees were not too dark-colored for the TV cameras. The flower pots were then added on the day of the show so that they were fresh and unaltered by unsuitable temperature and light conditions.

Format
Initial plans foresaw that the greenroom was part of the stage so that artists stayed on the stage after having performed. However, this idea finally was not realised in the live show.

The draw to determine the running order took place on 16 March 1961 at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. It was presented by Jacqueline Joubert, assisted by two children aged six and four.

Rehearsals started on 16 March 1961.

Contest overview
The contest was held on 18 March 1961, beginning at 22:00 (CET) and lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes. The event was hosted by French television presenter Jacqueline Joubert, who had previously presented the previous contest held in France in 1959.

The interval act was a ballet performance under the title "Rendez-vous à Cannes" with music written by Raymond Lefèvre and performed by Tessa Beaumont and Max Bozzoni.

The winner was represented by the song "Nous les amoureux", composed by Jacques Datin, written by Maurice Vidalin and performed by Jean-Claude Pascal. This was the first of an eventual five contest victories that Luxembourg would go on to achieve.

After the show, a supper for the participating delegations was held at the Salon des Ambassadeurs of the Casino municipal de Cannes.

Spokespersons
Each country nominated a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1961 contest are listed below.

 * – Siebe van der Zee
 * – Roland Eiworth
 * – Michael Aspel

Detailed voting results
Each country had 10 jury members who each awarded 1 point to their favourite song. The jury members were television viewers representing the public.

It is noticeable that during the voting, Luxembourg gave the UK eight points, and Norway also gave Denmark eight points. It was the largest number of points given to a country by a single jury since 1958, when Denmark provided France with nine points. Such a high number of points obtained by a country would not be achieved until 1970, when Ireland would receive nine points from Belgium.

Broadcasts
Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers. The local press reported a total number of 14 commentators for the contest, and a total of 16 countries broadcasting the event.

No official accounts of the viewing figures are known to exist. An estimate given in the French press ahead of the contest was 40 million viewers all over Europe.

Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

title: Eurovision Song Contest 1961


text:
Talk:Coordinated Universal Time

Future
The Future section reeks of non-objective content. For instance, it is claimed that the proposed 2001 change is "drastic". I'm sure someone will argue that a yotto-second difference is "huge", but no reasonable person would find 6-7 hrs over 2600 years to be "drastic", imho. Worse yet, the 2022 *agreement* to eliminate the leap-second "by 2035" is completely missing!! Is this the "same" as the non-conference of 2023 that was cited? (several times.) Who ever is editing this either needs to do their due duty or step aside. By the way, I understand some of the issues involved in the loosening the coupling of atomic to orbital times (is there enough discussion here about the difference between the (fictitious) point through which the Earth passes to start another year and the (fictitious) point at which (supposedly) all points on the Earth (tectonics aside) "match" their cosmological orientation of previous year? Just a digression.) but it would be useful to understand or at least see a discussion about WHY people don't want the change AND why people DO want the change - both politically and technically. That's sorely lacking -it's called being objective.71.30.94.234 (talk) 22:00, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
 * '234:"Worse yet, the 2022 *agreement* to eliminate the leap-second "by 2035" is completely missing!!"
 * The CGPM resolution is mentioned, but the date was only in the citation, not the body of the article. I corrected that.
 * '234: "Is this the "same" as the non-conference of 2023 that was cited?"
 * That's a different organization, the ITU. The World Radiocommunication Conference of 2023 is scheduled for 20 November to 15 December 2023 in Dubai, UAE. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:03, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Etymology
The article states that ''English speakers originally proposed CUT, while French speakers proposed TUC. The compromise that emerged was UTC'' But what about German and Danish people? Why were they not asked? Why only English and French? Konijnewolf (talk) 13:50, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

 * The cited source from NIST says
 * "The ITU felt it was best to designate a single abbreviation for use in all languages in order to minimize confusion. For example, in English the abbreviation for coordinated universal time would be CUT, while in French the abbreviation for "temps universel coordonné" would be TUC. To avoid appearing to favor any particular language, the abbreviation UTC was selected."

 * So according to the source, English and French are just examples of possible language issues. One would have to dig through the literature of the International Telecommunications Union in the 1960s to find what proposals were actually made. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I see that phrasing similar to the present phrasing was introduced by in October 2011. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:52, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I edited the article and added a quote by Dennis McCarthy about the origin of UTC. I eliminated unsourced claims that unnamed, unsourced English and French speakers made proposals. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:54, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks Jc. It looks better now. Konijnewolf (talk) 12:11, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Successor to what?
On 7 February 2024 modified a sentence in the lead to read "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), although GMT remains in use in some contexts, alongside other regional and industry-specific time standards."

I request a word-by-word justification for this change, and that any passages that support it in the main body of the article be identified.

My issues with the sentence are (some emphasis added):
 * the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time. Clearly UTC is the most widely used successor to GMT. But other successors serve critical roles in science, navigation, and timekeeping, especially UT1.
 * other regional. The claim that there are regional successors is not supported by a reliable source that I can see, and I don't know what time scales are being referred to.
 * industry-specific. It's unclear what this refers to. Maybe Amazon's time-smearing? At least some of the referents should be clear and supported by reliable sources (which would be in the body of the article). Jc3s5h (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll be back later with more on UTC being the effective successor to GMT. A bit more detail on the replacement of GMT with UTC would also be good for the history section. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 19:47, 7 February 2024 (UTC) I don't know whether this rephrasing helps alleviate the original concern so I will still come back with more on the "the effective" assertion later today. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 22:55, 7 February 2024 (UTC) It might also be worth mentioning astronomy parenthetically like "scientific research (especially astronomy)". Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:46, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That sentence suffered from over-editing. The "regional" was more about GMT still being used as a term in the UK and several other contexts, but that got tangled up with the more important part about other successors. The "industry-specific" was referring broadly to other standards such as UT1, TAI, GPS time, various leap second smearing time services, etc. I don't think the introduction needs to be exhaustive, but a few examples might help with clarity. (There are other articles like time standards for an exhaustive list.)
 * Putting aside for the moment, I suggest something like: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), complemented by specialized time standards such as UT1 and TAI that are vital in science, navigation, and timekeeping."
 * TAI and UT1 are mentioned here in a context that suggests they are "effective successors" to GMT. But the language is weak, and lends itself to misinterpretation. "effective successor" is ill-defined, and "complemented by" suggests that UT1 and TAI are also "effective successors", which is misleading (TAI in particular isn't even a civil timescale).
 * It's perfectly reasonable to note that GMT was retired (except by the **** Brits) when UTC was introduced; but that sentence is all over the place. I'm afraid I don't have a better sentence to propose, so for now I think it's best to scrap it.
 * As a Brit, I'm embarrassed by the BBC's insistence on declaring the time using GMT, and idiosyncratically at that: e.g. "Four Gee Emm Tee" (with the letters pronounced emphatically and smugly). It's imperialistic jingoism; and stupid, because GMT has never been well-defined, and is now not defined at all. We simply don't say "4 GMT"; we say "4 O'clock GMT", or "4AM GMT" (because GMT was used before 24-hour times-of-day were in wide usage in the UK). MrDemeanour (talk) 21:50, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Breaking it into two sentences for better clarity is always an option: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. However, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * It is clearer as two sentences.
 * Re. the first proposed sentence: "effective successor" is weasely; either it is the successor, or it isn't. Just say "the successor".
 * Re. the second proposed sentence: UT1 and TAI do "play a vital role", but not as "effective successors" to GMT. The "however" suggests that the vital role they play is related to UTCs role as the successor to GMT, which isn't true. So just drop the second sentence. MrDemeanour (talk) 15:18, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think leaving in "effective" is appropriate because it highlights the practical transition from GMT to UTC without necessarily implying a formal or official succession. I'm open to removing it if there's broader support for that, though. It's certainly easily sourced. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:15, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * As promised, here are some sources that say "the successor":
 * Other words, but same idea:
 * Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * Other words, but same idea:
 * Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * Other words, but same idea:
 * Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * I'd like to slightly rephrase my previous proposal for a replacement because "However" is too contradictory: "It is the effective successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in everyday usage and common applications. Nonetheless, in specialized domains such as scientific research, navigation, and timekeeping, other standards like UT1 and TAI play a vital role."
 * None of those quotes mention TAI or UT1. I'm fine with UTC being "the" successor to GMT; but you seem to be going through gyrations to keep your reference to UT1 and TAI somehow involved in the GMT succession. "However" and "Nonetheless" are more-or-less synonyms; but "however" isn't the problem. The problem is that TAI and UT1 are in no way successors to GMT. You seem to want to say that they are, without directly saying that they are (because they are not).
 * Wouldn't it solve your problem to just skip the mention of TAI and UT1? MrDemeanour (talk) 15:28, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * UT1 is a successor to GMT because before the variability of the rotation of the Earth was understood well enough to measure it, GMT was the only timescale available, so it was used in applications where the actual orientation of the Earth was needed, such as navigation and pointing telescopes. Now, in those applications, UT1 is used as a replacement for GMT. GMT was also used in applications where the durations needed to be found by subtracting a start time from an end time. TAI is more suitable for that purpose than UTC or UT1. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:50, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * All that the second sentence is conveying that while UTC has become the standard replacing GMT in most contexts, there are still applications where other time standards are crucial. The two sentences allow readers unfamiliar with this topic to better understand the role of UTC. I don't think we need to say whether TAI or UT1 are successors. It's enough to say they play a vital role in several areas and we can source it.
 * It would also be good for the body of the article to briefly discuss applications where UTC isn't used and why. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, so it's arguably fine to mention in the article that TAI and UT1 have subsumed some of the functionality previously served by GMT. I'm objecting to that mention being part of a specific claim about the successor to GMT, whether as a single sentence, or two sentences joined by a conjunction such as "however" or "nonetheless". That is, I would like to make a clear separation between the claim that UTC is the successor of GMT, and statements about TAI and UT1 filling part of the gap left by GMT. Note that TAI and UT1 both predate the introduction of UTC, so they cannot be its successor in any normal sense. MrDemeanour (talk) 12:43, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I respectfully disagree. There is a clear separation indicated by a full stop. "Nonetheless" is an adverb, not a conjunction; it introduces a statement that qualifies the preceding one. The proposed phrasing clearly distinguishes the roles of other standards such as UT1 and TAI without implying they are successors to UTC. I can find another way to phrase it, but I don't understand how you can be reading it that way. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 18:39, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I revised the article. It seems like everyone agrees the phrasing in the article was not ideal. I'm going to add a source as well, but I want to review the above citations to see if I can cover both sentences with a single citation rather than requiring multiple citations. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 19:05, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm satisfied with the edit by Danisl Quinlan. Normally, citations are not needed in the lead if the body of the article supports the statement. But it might be hard to find which part of the body supports this, so maybe it would be best to add a citation. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review. I think more definitely needs to be added to the history section regarding the transition to and adoption of UTC, but one thing at a time. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and removed the discuss tag and cleaned up the introduction a bit more, but I am happy to continue the discussion here, regardless. I'm working on adding that source now. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 05:06, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * MrDemeanor wrote "note that TAI and UT1 both predate the introduction of UTC, so they cannot be its successor in any normal sense." But we're not saying TAI and UT1 are successors of UTC, we're saying they're successors of GMT which satisfy the traditional roles of GMT. Originally, UTC was the functional replacement of GMT because it tracked UT2, which was similar to UT1 and gave the Earth's orientation as accurately as most users could take advantage of. TAI served the duration role and was used in comparisons between time laboratories. Since 1972 UTC has leap seconds, which makes it more of a compromise: it's good enough for civil time keeping, and can be used for Earth orientation or durations after the appropriate adjustments are made. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:42, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, sorry; "cannot be its successor" should have been "cannot be GMT's successor".
 * I'm OK with @Daniel's latest edit; I think it's now pretty clear. I still think the attempt to wedge UT1 and TAI into a paragraph about the successor to GMT is strained and unnecessary; but it's no longer susceptible to misinterpretation. MrDemeanour (talk) 11:34, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Coordinated Universal Time