In 1964, Standford was awarded the
Mendelssohn Scholarship, enabling him to travel to Venice and study with
Gian Francesco Malipiero, and later to Warsaw where he studied with
Witold Lutosławski. In 1967 he joined the professorial staff of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and from then divided his working life between composing, conducting, teaching and musical journalism. When Edmund Rubbra retired, Standford was appointed the School's principal composition professor and was awarded a Fellowship of the Guildhall School of Music (FGSM) in 1972. In 1978, he gained a master's degree in composition at
Goldsmiths College,
London University. Standford became chairman (1977–1980) of the Composers' Guild of Great Britain (since amalgamated into the
British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA)) and chairman (1980–1992) of the British Music Information Centre (since amalgamated into
Sound and Music). In those capacities, he organised British music representation at various international events, including the Nordic Music Committee (NOMUS) in Helsinki and the Latin-American Festival in Venezuela in collaboration with the BBC. Standford held the post of Head of Music at the
Leeds University College Bretton Hall from 1980 to 1993, while continuing to compose, write and appear as a regular jury member for competitive choral festivals in Hungary, France and Estonia. He married his wife Sarah Blyth Hilton in 1967 and they lived in London. She died in 2011 after 44 years of marriage, and he moved to
Occold, a village near Eye in Suffolk, where he continued to work, composing, writing and teaching until his death of a heart attack in April 2014, aged 75. recorded by the
BBC Singers in 2013, and smaller scale pieces such as the carol
This Day and the
Stabat mater. Chamber music includes the early String Quartet (winner of the
Clements Memorial Prize in 1975), the
Five French Folksongs written for and performed by the
Nash Ensemble of London, and the Symphony No 4,
Taikayoku, a chamber work for piano and six percussionists, including parts written for elementary players. The string trio
Holiday Memories is also written for amateur players. Standford was commissioned to write a number of pieces for the Guildhall graded examinations (now
Trinity College London). He also composed commercial and light music and arranged for films, television and theatre - including assignments for
Pathé News, the
London Palladium and
Granada Television. In 1971 he composed a 26 minute piece,
Autumn Grass, for the classically-influenced progressive rock group Continuum, and ghost wrote and directed classical style pieces for
Rod McKuen. He also wrote a series of lively articles entitled
Provocative Thoughts for
Music & Vision Magazine and a monthly blog for the
Open College of the Arts. In 1992, Standford published
Projects: A Course in Musical Composition, and in 2008 he devised and wrote the composition study course for the Open College of the Arts. == Awards ==