fact which the Worshipful Company of Musicians attributed to a lack of genius on Macfarren's part: "Never was more earnest composer, more prolific writer; never did man strive more zealously for the art of his country; yet Heaven had endowed him only with talent and not genius." Modern commentators generally consider Macfarren to be "the most eminent representative" of conservatism in orchestration. His Ajax has been called "professionally composed if uninspiring" and his writing for trumpet singled out as "conventional ... although he does make liberal use of the out-of-tune harmonics, especially b [flat]', he rarely uses notes outside the harmonic series and rarely writes the first trumpet part above the first treble staff." Macfarren's music is "capable of graceful lyricism, [but] what may be a desire to avoid cliches in the songs leads him at times to an unexpected angularity of line that seems more awkward than fresh. However, Macfarren's St John the Baptist has been praised as "an original and imaginative piece in which the shadow of Mendelssohn, so prominent since the appearance of Elijah in 1846, is only occasionally perceptible." Notes References Banister, Henry Charles. George Alexander Macfarren: His Life, Works, and Influence. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1891. OCLC 1720974. —. "The Life and Work of Sir G. A. Macfarren." Proceedings of the Musical Association 7th session (1880–1881): 67–88. Barnett, John Francis. Musical Reminiscences and Impressions. London: Hodder and Staughton, 1906. Brown, Clive. "Macfarren, Sir George Alexander (1813–1887)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 17 May 2009. Brownlow, James Arthur. The last trumpet: a history of the English slide trumpet. New York: Pendragon Press, 1996. . Caswell, Mina Holway. Ministry of Music: The Life of William Rogers Chapman. 1938. Reprint. Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2006. . Dale, Catherine. Music Analysis in Britain in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Aldershot, Hants., England: Ashgate, 2003. . Dibble, Jeremy. Charles Villiers Stanford: man and musician. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. . Foreman, Susan. London: A musical gazetteer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. . Hadow, W. H. Studies in Modern Music: Frederick Chopin, Antonín Dvořák, Johannes Brahms. 1894. Reprint. Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2004. . Macfarren, Walter Cecil. Memories: An autobiography. The Walter Scott Publishing Company, Ltd., 1905. "Macfarren’s 'Chevy Chase' Overture". The Musical Times, 1 August 1911 page 527. Shrock, Dennis. Choral Repertoire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. . Smither, Howard E. A History