‘King René’s Daughter’ is a cantata for female voices, written in 1871. The poem by Frederick Enoch is based on a lyric drama by Henrik Hertz. King René, of Provence, had betrothed his infant daughter Iolanthe to the son of the Count of Vaudemont. She became suddenly blind before she had emerged from babyhood, and, in order to keep from her the realization of her loss, her father brought her up without any knowledge of what sight means. A magician offered to restore her sight, making only the one condition that she first be told of the lost faculty, but this her father refused to do. One day her betrothed passed through the valley where she dwelt, singing his troubadour songs. He beheld Iolanthe for the first time and was fascinated by her beauty. Through the song which he sang to her of the lovely rose she realized the existence of the lost sense, and, this having been disclosed to her and the magician’s condition thus fulfilled, she was healed. There are thirteen numbers in the cantata and the solo parts are Iolanthe (soprano), Martha (mezzo-soprano), and Beatrice (contralto), though other solo voices are added in a trio and later in a quartet which, as narrator, tells of the troubadour’s song to Iolanthe. The entire work is written in a melodious, graceful style and closes with a chorus of exuberant joy at the restoration of sight to ‘King René’s daughter the fair.’ Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) has not infrequently been called ‘the English Mendelssohn,’ not because he was a conscious imitator of his great German contemporary and intimate friend, but because his music exemplifies the same qualities of polished refinement and exquisite workmanship, although of far less inspirational value and emotional content. Bennett was a ‘shy and reticent’ composer in point of the number of his works, and of these (there are only 46 opera in all) only three were in extended choral forms, namely, an ‘Ode for the Opening of the International Exhibition,’ 1862, to words by Tennyson, ‘The May Queen,’ a pastoral cantata, and ‘The Woman of Samaria,’ a sacred cantata usually classed as an oratorio.