Central to any study of English music at the beginning of the twentieth century must surely be the influence of the two most prominent composition teachers of the time, Frederick Corder at the Royal Academy of Music and Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Corder, a Wagnerian, aimed at being both permissive and progressive in his teaching, but arguably left his pupils without real direction or discipline. Stanford’s great reputation rested on a method which was neither undisciplined nor liberal. He was, in fact, intolerant of anything more modern than Brahms.