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 encouraged the rediscovery of English music of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly Henry Purcell's music and English virginal music. 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.

Fuller Maitland was criticised for his failure to acknowledge the talents of the English composers Arthur Sullivan, Edward Elgar and Frederick Delius, and later it was shown that he had falsified the facts in a critique of Sullivan. He was also slow to recognise the worth of contemporary composers from mainland Europe such as Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss.

Fuller Maitland was born at 90 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London, the son of John Fuller Maitland and his wife Marianne (née Noble). He attended Westminster School for three terms, but for most of his childhood he was educated privately, including musical instruction. Starting in 1875, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was active in the Cambridge University Musical Society. There he became friends with Charles Villiers Stanford and William Barclay Squire, whose sister Charlotte he married in 1885. He had intended to follow a career in the Church of England but decided to instead to pursue a career in music. After leaving Cambridge he studied the piano with Edward Dannreuther and other aspects of music with W. S. Rockstro, who encouraged him to explore early polyphonic music.

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