English Musical Renaissance

Hubert Parry (back l.), Alexander Mackenzie (front c.) and Charles Villiers Stanford (front r.) in 1910 with Edward German (back r.) and Dan Godfrey (front l.

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, while it received further promotion from the critics Frank Howes and Peter J. Pirie.