When the first important choral work of Charles Hubert H. Parry (b. 1848), scenes from Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound,’ was produced at the Gloucester Festival of 1880, its new tone of confident assertion was recognized as the beginning of a new era in English music, though its success with the public was very small. Works of impressive significance followed in quick succession and he became a figure of dominant importance in English musical life. In addition to three oratorios and several works combining symphonic and choral forms, he has written an imposing list of shorter choral works. The ordinary form of the cantata has little appeal for him, and none of his choral works is so named. ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ however, is really a cantata in feeling, even though it requires very slight solo work. He reaches superb heights of sustained expression in some of his odes--he wrote ten in all--that stamp his choral writing with qualities of superlative excellence, among which are perfect accentuation, mastery of expressive counterpoint and remarkable handling of large tonal masses so as to produce the greatest effects of sonority and breadth. These qualities appear with conspicuous force in his famous ‘Blest Pair of Sirens,’ an ode by John Milton, set for eight-part chorus and orchestra, and first sung in 1887 by the Bach Choir. Other choral works before 1900 that added greatly to his reputation are ‘The Glories of Our Blood and State,’ a funeral ode by James Shirley, produced at the Gloucester Festival of 1883, ‘Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day’ (poem by Pope) at Leeds, 1889, _L’Allegro ed il Penseroso_ (poem by Milton) at Norwich, 1890, ‘Invocation to Music’ (ode in memory of Purcell by Robert Bridges) at Leeds, 1895, and ‘The Lotus-Eaters,’ a choral song, 1892. With the exception of ‘The Witch’s Daughter,’ performed at the Leeds Festival of 1904, all of the cantatas and shorter choral works of Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (born 1847) fall within the period covered by the present chapter. Attention was first attracted to his fine command of choral technique by ‘The Bride,’ a cantata founded on a poem by the German poet, Hamerling, and performed at the Gloucester Festival of 1881. Possibly his highest point of artistic effectiveness is reached in his fine _Veni, Creator Spiritus_, set to Dryden’s paraphrase and produced at the Birmingham Festival, 1891. Burns’ ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ furnished inspiration for one of his most characteristic works (for chorus only) and naturally appealed strongly to his national feeling and idiom. His other cantatas include ‘Jason’ (Bristol Festival, 1882), ‘The Story of Sayid’ (Leeds, 1886), founded on Edwin Arnold’s ‘Pearls of the Faith,’ and the ‘Dream of Jubal’ (Liverpool Philharmonic, 1889). In the last-named cantata he employs a reciter in addition to soloists and chorus.