To the most distinguished thinker of that school the correct way of writing a song is still the German way. The rest-of-the-world way is simply wrong. Race, feeling, national sentiment, all go for nothing. In effect he says: 'You may draw your water from a spring in Kent, in Maryland, or in Siberia; but it won't travel except in disused Rhine-wine bottles.' The proposition only needs stating to be condemned.

This is, in small, the attitude of the oldest group. But we must remember that most of them continually forget their treasonable theories and prove their loyalty to national ideals in their practice. It is not a complete loyalty, but it is one to which all respect and honor are due. We must not judge it by the tree of which it was itself the seed, but by the sickly undergrowth among which it managed to strike root. And this shrivelled stuff is represented to us by such names as E. J. Loder (1813-65), H. H. Pierson (1815-73), and W. Sterndale Bennett (1816-75). The last-named composer in especial is a striking instance of an able but weak personality overwhelmed by circumstance. When he was a student among the Germans his docility to their ideals won Schumann's approval. Returning to England, he found himself, so to speak, hanging in the air like an orchid—without roots. Naturally he withered away. And for many years England had the spectacle of her chief musician dribbling out smooth Anglo-German platitudes, while Germany herself was producing Lohengrin, Tristan, and 'The Ring.' Only one work of his has weathered the storm of the English musical revival—'The Naiads.' But, of course, neither he, nor Loder, nor Pierson had any closer connection with the English renaissance than the glow-worm has with the coming sun. All three of these men were as clever as any living American or English composer. They were all driven into indignant silence, sullen despair, or musical madness by the anti-national conditions of their time.

Contrast their output with that of the seven musical children whom the fairy-stork brought to the rebirth of English music. Their names and natal years are: Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842), Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (1847), Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848), Arthur Goring Thomas (1851), Frederic Hymen Cowen (1852), Charles Villiers Stanford (1852), and Edward William Elgar (1857). These seven men then—all German-trained except Elgar and Thomas—yet draw a large part of their vitality from the soil on which they were bred. One only needs to hear an Irish Rhapsody of Stanford, a big chorus of Parry, or a gay little song of Sullivan to become aware of a 'new something' in art. And, if the American reader be inclined to doubt this 'new something' at a first hearing, he may be earnestly advised to ask himself this question: 'What would be my first impressions of a symphonic poem by Strauss if that were my first introduction to a German art-work?'

The fertility of all these composers is so amazing that any attempt to catalogue their works would stifle the rest of this volume. Songs, operas, symphonies, sonatas, variations, church music, and choral works all pour forth in an endless stream. Under the one heading, 'works for voice and orchestra,' Parry has 33 entries. Stanford's opus numbers approach 150, and he begins with 7 operas, 7 symphonies, incidental music to 5 plays, and 27 'orchestral and choral works.' Cowen has written 4 operas, 4 oratorios, 6 symphonies, and 18 cantatas; and that is only the beginning of his list. It is plainly impossible even to hint at this enormous mass of material. We must content ourselves with a rapid glance at the distinguishing features of each composer.

Sullivan, the man who endeared himself personally and musically to a generation, needs no introduction. His work is practically summed up in the words 'Savoy Opera.' And these words stand everywhere for melodic charm and fancy, delicate humor, and exquisitely finished workmanship. On the more æsthetic side we owe him a lasting debt 'for his recognition of the fact that it was not only necessary to set his text to music which was pleasing in itself, but to invent melodies in such close alliance with the words that the two things became (to the hearer) indistinguishable.' His long series of works beginning with 'Contrabandista,' 'Cox and Box,' and 'Trial by Jury' continued through 'Patience,' 'Pinafore,' 'The Mikado,' 'The Yeomen of the Guard,' 'The Gondoliers,' and others, till his death interrupted the composition of his last work, 'The Emerald Isle.' It must be added that both in his simple concert songs and in his choral music Sullivan enjoyed a wide popularity. This is now waning. Of his larger concert works 'The Golden Legend' and the overture 'Di Ballo' possess the greatest vitality.

Mackenzie, who succeeded Macfarren (1813-87) as principal of the Royal Academy of Music, is a man of forceful character. Like Sullivan, he was trained in Germany and came back a brilliant contrapuntist with wide, far-reaching musical intentions. Familiar with every nook in the orchestra, he has produced a mass of concert and opera music all characterized by great technical dexterity and a certain continual color and warmth. More than once the present writer has been surprised by some particularly modern stroke of his orchestral expression and, after ascribing it to the influence of the most neo of neo-continentals, has discovered that Mackenzie was doing it before its supposed author was born. It is a common word in London that Stanford and Mackenzie spend their evenings reading each other's full-scores, both missing out the German parts. Of Mackenzie's works the best known are the violin 'Benedictus' and 'Pibroch,' the orchestral ballad La Belle Dame sans Merci, the cantatas 'The Story of Sayid,' 'The Cottar's Saturday Night,' 'The Dream of Jubal,' and, finally, the ever-popular overture 'Britannia.'

The English public connects Parry's name mainly with his colossal choral writings and with his directorship of The Royal College of Music. That, however, by no means exhausts the list of his activities. In the realms of song, of symphonic and chamber music, he has shown an astonishing fertility. His productions are marked throughout by a boundless contrapuntal skill based very decidedly on the old order of things. To his heroic mind forty-part writing is probably very much what four-part writing is to the rest of mankind. A sort of hard-knit sincerity and a lyrical grandeur pervade all his works. One feels that, if Milton's father had had his son's genius, he would have been a seventeenth-century Parry. Of humor he has none, but in its place a constant cheerfulness characteristic of a certain very good type of Englishman. His best-loved work is undoubtedly 'Blest Pair of Sirens.' But after that we must mention 'The Glories of Our Blood and State,' L'Allegro ed il Pensieroso, 'Lady Radnor's Suite,' the 'Symphonic Variations in E minor,' and the beautiful series of 'English Lyrics.'

Goring Thomas was an Englishman who, with the help of great natural talent and of long residence in France, almost performed the miracle of successfully changing his nationality. Of course, he had to pay the price; and it was heavy. After burning incense at the altar of French ideals he came back to a country where grand opera was only an annual importation symbolical of financial respectability. He might have done Sullivan's work better than Sullivan. But the fates were inexorably against him. He did not even get a knighthood. Imagine Saint-Saëns caught young and studying Handelian counterpoint at the Royal Academy of Music; or Stravinsky doing 'fifth grade harmony' at the Royal College of Music with his eye on the organ-loft at York Minster or the conductor's seat at the Gaiety as possible goals of his ambition. Either instance will give the curious reader some idea of Thomas's difficulties, social and psychological. One must add that he cannot be denied great charm of manner and a strong selective gift both in his melody and harmony. He had all the Frenchman's talent for recognizing dramatic effect and securing it swiftly. His best-known works are 'Esmeralda,' 'Nadeshda,' and 'The Swan and the Skylark.'

Cowen is a West Indian Jew. His artistic activities, however, have mainly centred round London and Glasgow. In the former place he has conducted the 'Philharmonic,' and in the latter the Scottish Orchestra. As a composer he has been both over-blamed and over-praised. His blood undoubtedly gives him facility, adaptability, and a somewhat detached viewpoint. These qualities, academically praised by the Anglo-Saxon, yet excite in England a certain half-envious distrust when actually exercised. For instance, the English musician does not care two raps about the style of composition commonly called 'ye olde English'; but he thinks it scarcely proper that Cowen should be able to write in that style so well. Again, in his heart of hearts the professional man probably thinks that King David's ultimate object in writing Psalm 130 was the afternoon service at Westminster Abbey; and here, too, Cowen's pen causes some uneasiness. On the other side of the picture we have had the composer figuring with the public for years as a miracle of charm, grace, and delicate fancy. A fair view of Cowen would probably show him as a composer somewhat isolated from his fellows, naturally inclined to the lighter side of life, and perhaps more anxious for the laurel than for the dust. His easy yet punctilious technique is shown in a long list of popular works. Of these the most successful are his two sets of 'Old English Dances,' the orchestral suite 'The Language of Flowers,' the overture 'The Butterflies' Ball,' the 'Scandinavian,' 'Welsh,' and 'Idyllic' symphonies, and the choral works 'Ruth,' 'The Rose Maiden,' 'The Sleeping Beauty,' and the 'Ode to the Passions.'

Stanford and Ireland contribute respectively to English musical life and to the empire what a penn'orth of yeast does to a basin of dough. As far as one may judge the ferment cannot be stopped. Its chemical constituents are wit, clarity, and humor, all combined by a delightful ease and precision of technique. Stanford's scores are models of elegant reticence and their 'form' is beyond reproach. In all his work one notices a constant refusal to accept gloom for poetry. He is a musical Oliver Goldsmith of the nineteenth century. No one has done more for the preservation, the arranging, and the publishing of Irish folk-song. Among the best-known of his works are his comic opera 'Shamus O'Brien,' his 'Irish Rhapsodies,' his 'Variations on an English Theme,' and his many fine string quartets and quintets. In the realm of song-literature both original and arranged he has a great record; much of his church music is by now classic on both sides of the Atlantic; and he has made a very special success with his striking Choral Ballads. In these last three departments one may mention his 'Cavalier Songs' and his 'Songs of Old Ireland'; his Services in B-flat, A and F; 'The Revenge,' 'The Voyage of Maeldune,' 'The Bard,' and 'Phaudrig Crohoore.'