English Musical Renaissance

The idea gained considerable currency at the time, with support from prominent music critics, but from the latter part of the 20th century has been less widely propounded.

Writers who propounded the theory included Francis Hueffer and J A Fuller Maitland, while it received further promotion from the critics Frank Howes and Peter J. Pirie.

In his review in The Daily Telegraph of Hubert Parry's First Symphony he wrote that the work gave "capital proof that English music has arrived at a renaissance period.

[9] The composer Sir John Stainer wrote, "Parry and Stanford are rapidly getting absolute control of all the music, sacred or secular, in England; and also over our provincial Festivals and Concert societies, and other performing bodies.

Eatock notes that as late as 1966, Frank Howes, successor to Hueffer and Fuller Maitland at The Times, stated that the English musical renaissance was "an historical fact".

[13] In 1993, Robert Stradling and Meirion Hughes argued that the proponents of the movement were "a self-appointed and self-perpetuating oligarchy" based at the Royal College of Music in London.

"[14] Stradling and Hughes contended that this élite was single-minded to the point of ruthlessness in promoting its conception of British music, sidelining all native composers who did not conform to its aesthetic views.

[14] The composer Thomas Dunhill wrote that when he was a student at the Royal College under Parry "it was considered scarcely decent to mention Sullivan's name with approval in the building".