In the last quarter of the 19th century, the London music establishment made frantic attempts to put British music back on the world map. However, this project, which coined itself 'English Musical Renaissance' (EMR), did not sufficiently succeed in freeing Britain from its self-image of being a 'nation without music'. Things took a turn for the worse when this self-criticism found an echo in a German socio-cultural travelogue. Consequently, to this day, Britain still has to deal with the sobriquet 'Land ohne Musik'. Historiography of British music in general and of the EMR in particular is what one might call 'autohistoriographical' in nature: exclusively British matters are described by British (music) historians for a distinctly British readership. Its historical objectivity is therefore problematically thwarted by the subjectivity of self-designation. Hence the motto I borrowed from Allan Megill: "when identity is problematized, memory is valorized". On academia.edu I state my study on this issue, primarily conceived for the non-British, Dutch-speaking reader, provides a commented overview of most of these sources and a critical review of the five major EMR-narratives. It ends with a caveat onthe most recent one, which. It is just about the only one consulted on the continent, while it is controversial and provocative to the extent that it cannot be fully understood and appreciated without a sufficient knowledge of the underlying facts and the other historical works on the subject.