In England, cantatas, especially those based on some story or legend, have long been exceedingly popular. The love of choral music has been a national characteristic of the English people for over two centuries. As early as the seventeenth century choral festivals were organized by various cathedral choirs acting conjointly. The celebration of St. Cecilia’s day was made the occasion of some of the earliest of these festivals and ‘The Musical Society’ was organized in London in 1683 in order to conduct them on a more artistic basis. Musical festivals and associations were later formed in the provinces and grew into great favor. As time went on these assumed large dimensions and exerted an artistic influence as in no other country. Some of those now in existence are extremely old, as the ‘Festivals of the Three Choirs’ of Gloucester, Worcester, and Hereford, organized in 1724, and the Birmingham Festival, begun in 1768 by a series of concerts made up almost exclusively of Handel’s works. The tremendous popularity of Handel’s choral works in England not only resulted in the extension of the Handel worship which continued unabated until the frequent visits of Mendelssohn attracted much of its enthusiasm to his own superb oratorios, but caused a substantial increase in the number of choral societies throughout the kingdom. These societies have been unusually generous in giving native works abundant hearing and English composers were not slow to take advantage of the opportunities thus offered. English choral works, therefore, constitute a formidable array. From the time of Purcell until the present generation of composers, however, very few works have been produced that rise much above the general level of mere respectability or amiable reflection of Handelian and Mendelssohnian models that seems to be the chief characteristic of English choral music of the period thus bounded. Indeed, English choral works produced in this period before 1850 are practically a negligible quantity in the literature of this branch of musical art. But among English composers who were active in this field in the third quarter of the nineteenth century there are several who deserve special mention; these are Sir Julius Benedict, Sir Michael Costa, Sir George A. Macfarren, Sir William Sterndale Bennett, and Henry Smart.