The Library World Volume 19 Issue 9

Abstract

The Third Annual Report of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, for the year ending 31st December, 1916, has just been issued, and we suppose is now in the hands of most librarians. It is a record of great and important activity which is being pursued on catholic and well considered lines. With what is the outstanding feature of the report, the attempt to revivify a purely English School of Music, while we welcome it gladly, we are not concerned, except in so far as it suggests the establishment of a large central lending library for music, which would lend copies to small choirs, orchestras and similar bodies, for trial and performance; and all librarians will be interested in the decision to publish, after the War, the church music composed in the Tudor and Elizabethan periods, which is being edited by the organist of Westminster Cathedral, Dr. Terry. A library edition will be printed five years hence to serve as a classical record, and the more important works will be printed in an inexpensive form for wider circulation. Anyone who has studied the history of music will know that in the Elizabethan period the English were the most musical people in the world, and this work will do much to establish that fact, and to inspire modern musicians, with all their present day resources, to develop on more distinctly national lines.