Had England shown herself barren in producing sons possessing great musical gifts, the position to-day would at least be explicable, but this is not the case. There has been no time in the centuries since Purcell's death destitute of some living representative of the old English genius, although, perhaps, living in the comparative obscurity of a cathedral town, and far removed from the garish lights of the Metropolis.
Certain it is that of native composers who have shown any English characteristics in their music, the majority of them have been reared in our cathedral cities, and have imbibed their earliest impressions in cathedral choirs.
To go no further back than the Wesleys, Samuel and his son, Samuel Sebastian, we need only cite a few of them: Atwood, Pierson, Goss, Sterndale Bennett, Arthur Sullivan, Sir
Frederick Bridge, Sir Walter Parratt—and crowds of others, both living and dead.
Removed from the centralised cosmopolitanism of London, many of them had a chance of giving expression to their thoughts in music not characterised by foreign idiom.
If the fine work of such men as Hubert Parry, Edward Elgar, Granville Bantock, Walford Davies, William Wallace, Joseph Holbrook, and others of the new British school does not convince the country of the fatuity of perpetuating the state of things existing at present, nothing will, and we must accept the fact that the idea of foreign supremacy in every branch of musical work, is so engrained in the blood of the "man in the street" as to be absolutely ineradicable.
But I do not believe it.
One hardly dares to question the sanity of a nation, even on so elusive a subject as music.
To-day, even, we can see the Dawn: the Penumbra is vanishing.
Not long ago it was considered essential that a singer of any exceptional merit should go to Italy to "finish"—or be finished, as the case might be. Not only so, but it was often thought necessary to Italianise the Anglo-Saxon name, and this was occasionally done with grotesque result!