English Musical Renaissance

The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when British composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively national idiom, and to have equalled the achievement of composers in mainland Europe. 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.

Among the composers championed by proponents of the theory were Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Alexander Mackenzie. Writers who propounded the theory included Francis Hueffer and J A Fuller Maitland.

The term originated in an article by the critic Joseph Bennett in 1882. 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." Bennett developed the theme in 1884, singling out for praise a now forgotten symphony by Frederic Cowen (the Scandinavian Symphony) and equally forgotten operas by Arthur Goring Thomas (Esmeralda), Charles Villiers Stanford (Savonarola) and Alexander Mackenzie (Columba).

The idea of an English musical renaissance was taken up by the music critic of The Times, Francis Hueffer, and his successor J A Fuller Maitland. The latter became the most assiduous proponent of the theory. His 1902 book English Music in the XIXth Century is subdivided into two parts: "Book I: Before the Renaissance (1801–1850)", and "Book II: The Renaissance (1851–1900)". Fuller Maitland's thesis was that although "it would be absurd to claim a place beside Beethoven or Schubert" for earlier British composers such as Macfarren and Sterndale Bennett, it was not absurd to do so for his favourite British composers of the late 19th century. The Royal College of Music, the centre of the renaissance theory, was founded explicitly "to enable us to rival the Germans".

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