AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR: ‘TUDOR CHURCH MUSIC’, THE OUSTING OF RICHARD TERRY, AND A TRUST VINDICATED

Abstract

A CHANCE CONVERSATION with the Howells scholar Paul Andrews led me to a hitherto undocumented and unresearched archive in the Scottish Record Office at Edinburgh. Forming part of the papers of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, it consists of 23 files of material relating to the famous series Tudor Church Music (TCM).' When I began to scrutinize the files I had little idea of what to expect. What emerged were not only the full details of the conception, progress and disintegration of TCM-the ten royal quarto volumes that came to be known as the 'library edition' published between 1922 and 1929, plus its associated series of single octavo numbers-but also, among the voluminous correspondence, an astonishing series of letters involving some of the early luminaries of the Tudor revival. The original editor of TCM was Richard Runciman Terry, whose very appointment provoked some barbed responses. Subsequently he was assisted by an editorial committee consisting of Percy Buck, E. H. Fellowes, Alick Ramsbotham and Sylvia Townsend Warner.2 Much has been written about how Terry came to be removed as editor as soon as TCM began to appear in print: such writings have tended to be sympathetic to Terry.3 However, correspondence preserved among the TCM files reveals the dramatic train of events that led to Terry's resignation as editor, and its aftermath. What the files do not reveal is the fact that the Carnegie Trust's original faith in the project was eventually vindicated, albeit after several decades. TCM was first formally mooted in a paper circulated to members of the Carnegie Trust's Music Sub-Committee4 for discussion at a meeting of the Trust's Executive Committee on 26 February 1916. This paper, 'Publication of Music Manuscripts in British Museum', was discussed by the Carnegie Executive, which in turn produced a report of the meeting entitled 'Publication of Tudor and Elizabethan Music in the