Fuller Maitland was born at 90 Gloucester Place,
Portman Square, London, the son of John Fuller Maitland and his wife Marianne (
née Noble). He attended
Westminster School for three terms, but for most of his childhood he was educated privately, including musical instruction. Starting in 1875, he studied at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was active in the Cambridge University Musical Society. There he became friends with
Charles Villiers Stanford and
William Barclay Squire, whose sister Charlotte he married in 1885. He had intended to follow a career in the
Church of England but decided to instead to pursue a career in music. After leaving Cambridge he studied the piano with
Edward Dannreuther and other aspects of music with
W. S. Rockstro, who encouraged him to explore early
polyphonic music. More than a hundred of his articles survive, in revised form, in the online version of Grove available in 2010. In pioneering the revival of the virginals, Fuller Maitland published an edition of the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1894–99). He was a member of the editorial committee of the
Purcell Society, for which he edited several of Purcell's works. With his relative
Lucy Broadwood, he edited the collection
English County Songs (1893), and he was on the original committee of the
Folk Song Society, founded in 1898. He socialized with contralto, composer, and music festival organizer
Mary Augusta Wakefield.
Reputation as a critic At a time when music lovers generally admired either
Richard Wagner or
Johannes Brahms but not both, Fuller Maitland, according to the obituary notice in
The Times, "worshipped" both Wagner and Brahms. Fuller Maitland rejected British composers who did not conform to his template. "
Sullivan's frequent forays into what was viewed as the questionable realm of operetta removed him from the equation at once.
Elgar was never a contender, with his unacademic, lower-middle-class background coupled with progressive tendencies, while
"Fritz" Delius was simply not English enough." which Elgar alluded to as "the shady side of musical criticism … this foul, unforgettable episode." Later, it was shown that Fuller Maitland had falsified the facts, inventing a banal lyric, passing it off as genuine and condemning Sullivan for supposedly setting such inanity.
Later years Fuller Maitland gave up journalism in 1911, retiring to
Borwick Hall near
Carnforth in Lancashire. He continued to write books, including an autobiography,
A Door-Keeper of Music (1929), in which he admitted that he had been wrong in earlier years to dismiss Sullivan's comic operas as "ephemeral". His aversion to modern music abated in his later years, and he recognised the importance of composers such as
Richard Strauss and
Claude Debussy. He received an honorary
DLitt from
Durham University in 1928. Fuller Maitland's wife died in 1931. His personal fortune was assessed at £38,477 (equivalent to about £2 million in 2010). ==Publications==