John Alexander Fuller Maitland

John Alexander Fuller Maitland (7 April 1856 – 30 March 1936) was an influential British music critic and scholar from the 1880s to the 1920s.

He also propounded the notion of an English Musical Renaissance in the second half of the 19th century, particularly praising Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry.

He was also slow to recognise the worth of contemporary composers from mainland Europe such as Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss.

Elgar was never a contender, with his unacademic, lower-middle-class background coupled with progressive tendencies, while "Fritz" Delius was simply not English enough.

Fuller Maitland had published a denigrating obituary of Sullivan in the Cornhill Magazine,[8] which Elgar alluded to as "the shady side of musical criticism … this foul, unforgettable episode.

"[9] Later, it was shown that Fuller Maitland had falsified the facts, inventing a banal lyric, passing it off as genuine and condemning Sullivan for supposedly setting such inanity.

He continued to write books, including an autobiography, A Door-Keeper of Music (1929), in which he admitted that he had been wrong in earlier years to dismiss Sullivan's comic operas as "ephemeral".

[10] His aversion to modern music abated in his later years, and he recognised the importance of composers such as Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy.