Wagner: ‘The Love Feast of the Apostles’; Liszt: ‘The Bells of Strassburg,’ ‘Prometheus’--Brahms: ‘Song of Triumph,’ ‘Song of Destiny’--Max Bruch; ‘Frithjof,’ ‘Fair Ellen,’ ‘The Cross of Fire,’ ‘The Lay of the Bell,’ etc.--Rheinberger; Dvořák; Hofmann; Goetz--Grieg; Gounod; Sullivan: ‘The Golden Legend’; Barnby; Gaul; Stainer; Cowen--Parry; Mackenzie; Stanford--Elgar: ‘King Olaf’; ‘Caractacus’; ‘The Black Knight’--Coleridge-Taylor: ‘Hiawatha’ cycle--Dudley Buck: ‘The Golden Legend’; ‘The Light of Asia’; Horatio Parker and other cantata writers in the United States. Teutonic genius was supreme in the field of cantata-writing until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when there appeared numerous and worthy rivals. While the Germans have consistently retained their love for this form and have maintained a numerical lead in actual production, England, France, Scandinavia, and America have produced choral works that challenge comparison with the best German standards, and in some instances have struck out original lines of development that mark points of notable departure from the older models. The period covered by this chapter includes the works produced in the last quarter, or at most the last third, of the nineteenth century, with some flexibility at either boundary. I The most notable exception to the above chronological grouping is Richard Wagner (1813-1883), who belongs to the preceding chapter as far as dates are concerned. But so many of the prominent composers here considered were so strongly influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the Bayreuth master’s art-methods and followed them in such a direct line of succession, that this seems the more fitting place to mention his brief connection with this field of musical literature. ‘The Love Feast of the Apostles’ (_Das Liebesmahl der Apostel_) was Wagner’s one and only cantata. It was written in 1843, the same year as Schumann’s ‘Paradise and Peri’ and three years before Berlioz completed his ‘Damnation of Faust.’ Wagner had already written ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and ‘Rienzi’ had been performed in Dresden the summer preceding the composition of this cantata. The thirty-year-old composer put into this work much of the dramatic power already hinted at in ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and displayed with such overwhelming power in his later works. It was written for a great _Männersängerfest_ held in Dresden in July, 1843, and was first performed under his own direction on the 6th of the month in the _Frauenkirche_, the orchestra and chorus numbering one thousand performers. The subject of this Scriptural Scene was suggested by the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles and Wagner wrote his own words, as he did in all of his dramatic works.