Few have studied English music of the first half of the nineteenth century, and the prevailing impression of the state of music in that period is a false one. It is based, naturally enough, on the two main sources of ready information: books of musical history , and t he music of the period that is still in use to-day. There is reason to think that both these sources are misleading. The historians have depicted the period as a Dark Age of music., in 'which composers in the main confined themselves to choral music' in abject mimicry of Handel or Mendelssohn, audiences were indifferent to everything except "Messiah" and popular ballads, and the few composers who had higher ideals were crushed by the apathy and Philistinism of the majority. The writers who were mainly responsible for this view were Davey, Fuller, Maitland and Walker (D9, El, E2). They wrot at a time when the "English Renaissance" was thought to be in full flood. Parry, Stanford and EIgar were the heroes of the day, and it was natural for historians to see the preceding period as the darkness that came before the dawn.