Charles Wood (15 June 1866 – 12 July 1926) was an Irish composer and teacher; his students included Ralph Vaughan Williams at Cambridge and Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music.

In 1889 he attained a teaching position at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, first as organ scholar and then as fellow in 1894, becoming their first director of music and organist.

[3] His pupils at Cambridge included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Nicholas Gatty, Arthur Bliss, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and W Denis Browne.

Dent says that, because Stanford did not reside in Cambridge, Wood took on the real burden of teaching for many years before his own election as Professor of Music, by which time his health was already undermined.

[6] Like his better-known colleague Stanford, Wood is chiefly remembered for his Anglican church music: there are over 250 sacred works and many hymn tunes.

During Passiontide his St Mark Passion, written in 1920 for Eric Milner-White, the then Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, is sometimes performed.

[7] Wood's anthems with organ, Expectans expectavi, and O Thou, the Central Orb are both frequently performed and recorded; as are his unaccompanied anthems Tis the day of Resurrection, Glory and Honour and, most popular of all, Hail, gladdening light and its lesser-known equivalent for men's voices, Great Lord of Lords.

[1] He also composed eight string quartets (six numbered, plus the Variations on an Irish Folk Tune and a first movement fragment in G minor), spanning 1885 to 1917.

3 in A minor (1911) a more personal voice emerges, partly through the use of Irish folk melodies and dance tunes as thematic material.

Wood's arrangement of The Irish Famine Song (The Praties They Grow Small Over Here) was recorded in the early 1920s by the Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing, and released on Vocalion A-0168.