Alfred Robert Gaul (1837-1913) is the composer of many pleasing and popular cantatas, mostly on sacred subjects, the most widely known of which are ‘The Holy City,’ ‘Ruth,’ ‘The Ten Virgins’ and ‘Joan of Arc.’ Sir John Stainer (1840-1901) writes in a more serious style, but yet more suited to church choirs than to large choral bodies. ‘The Daughter of Jairus,’ ‘The Crucifixion’ (A Meditation for Passion Week), and ‘St. Mary Magdalen’ are his more familiar cantatas. Frederic Hymen Cowen (born 1852) has been a prolific writer of cantatas, no fewer than seven having come from his pen. They are ‘The Rose Maiden’ (1870), ‘The Corsair’ (1876), ‘St. Ursula’ (1881), ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ (1885), ‘St. John’s Eve’ (1889), ‘The Water Lily’ (1893), and ‘The Transfiguration’ (1895). Some of these, particularly ‘The Rose Maiden,’ have attained wide popularity because of their easy, fluent melody and pleasing part-writing. VI It remained for three Englishmen, all born within five years of each other--Mackenzie (1847), Parry (1848) and Stanford (1852)--to break away from the traditions of English choral music and to venture to say their musical thoughts in their own way. The point of departure from the old to the new paths bases itself squarely on the work of this trio. Cowen and Cordor (both born in 1852) added nothing of importance to the musical means of expression employed by this trio, but Elgar (born in 1857) has carried forward English choral music to heights never before attained. The decade between 1847 and 1857, therefore, is memorable in English musical history in having witnessed the birth of the men who are most responsible for the remarkable revolution in the character of English choral music witnessed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is a curious coincidence that the ode, a form cultivated with such industrious zeal by early English composers, should have appealed with great force to all of the trio mentioned above, as a musical form worthy of revival. No less than fourteen odes came from their pens.