Not strictly organ - please forgive!

[AJJ]

This may be a total blank but does anyone know of where I might get info. about Sir R R Terry's students - around 1900? He was of course DOM at the new Wesminster Cathedral from 1901 and a towering figure in the re introduction of Renaissance music into the UK and also in the revival of Gregorian Chant. This would really help in some current research. Maybe there is even a R. R. Terry Society somewhere out there somewhere?

 

Thanks

A

[angwinpeter]

This may be a total blank but does anyone know of where I might get info. about Sir R R Terry's students - around 1900? He was of course DOM at the new Wesminster Cathedral from 1901 and a towering figure in the re introduction of Renaissance music into the UK and also in the revival of Gregorian Chant. This would really help in some current research. Maybe there is even a R. R. Terry Society somewhere out there somewhere?

 

Thanks

A

 

R R Terry has quite a detailed biography on Facebook, believe it or not! This gives full details of where he taught etc and schools may still have some useful leads.

 

PA

[AJJ]

R R Terry has quite a detailed biography on Facebook, believe it or not! This gives full details of where he taught etc and schools may still have some useful leads.

 

PA

Thanks - 'will check this - at least there is no danger of RRT 'poking' or whatever it is they call it on fb.

 

A

[MusingMuso]

This may be a total blank but does anyone know of where I might get info. about Sir R R Terry's students - around 1900? He was of course DOM at the new Wesminster Cathedral from 1901 and a towering figure in the re introduction of Renaissance music into the UK and also in the revival of Gregorian Chant. This would really help in some current research. Maybe there is even a R. R. Terry Society somewhere out there somewhere?

 

Thanks

A

 

 

==================

 

 

I can tell you that Terry was a friend of Alex Maclean (the "God of Scarborough") who conducted the Spa Orchstra there; the concert hall of which still exists, I believe. (This may be where the theatre-organ collection is sighted, but I would have to check).

 

Alex Maclean was, of course, the father of Quentin Maclean, and the young Maclean studied with Terry. He was also Assistant at Westminster under him, and eventually moved to Canada where he died. Apart from his considerable skills as a theatre organist, Maclean (never an FRCO) actually gave one of the "Finals" recitals at the RCO; such was his reputation; having studied in Leipzig under Straube ("the maker of organists") and Max Reger.

 

Maclean composed an Organ Concerto, and it was highly regarded by a certain gentleman by the name of George Thalben-Ball. I believe the score is in Canada still.

 

That's about all I know about Terry & his influence, but every bit helps I suppose.

 

MM

[AJJ]

==================

 

 

I can tell you that Terry was a friend of Alex Maclean (the "God of Scarborough") who conducted the Spa Orchstra there; the concert hall of which still exists, I believe. (This may be where the theatre-organ collection is sighted, but I would have to check).

 

Alex Maclean was, of course, the father of Quentin Maclean, and the young Maclean studied with Terry. He was also Assistant at Westminster under him, and eventually moved to Canada where he died. Apart from his considerable skills as a theatre organist, Maclean (never an FRCO) actually gave one of the "Finals" recitals at the RCO; such was his reputation; having studied in Leipzig under Straube ("the maker of organists") and Max Reger.

 

Maclean composed an Organ Concerto, and it was highly regarded by a certain gentleman by the name of George Thalben-Ball. I believe the score is in Canada still.

 

That's about all I know about Terry & his influence, but every bit helps I suppose.

 

MM

 

 

Thanks

 

A

[davidh]

Maybe there is even a R. R. Terry Society somewhere out there somewhere?

If only there were an R R Terry fan club! I suspect that some of his choral music is still performed, but very little has been recorded. It is more than 50 years ago that I heard, for the first and the last time, his setting of the Good Friday Improperia (The Reproaches) and I would like to hear them again.

[MusingMuso]

Thanks

 

A

 

======================

 

I just checked a few facts re: Quentin Maclean/Terry. I think I'm right in saying that Terry was his first teacher at the organ, because I seem to recall that the Maclean family were then resident in London. It was later when his father moved to Scarborough, and some time after Quentin Mcalean's return to the UK, (as an English student at Leipzig, he was holed up as a POW), that he became assistant at Westminster. I can tell you that Maclean gave the first performance of Hindemith's Organ Concerto in the UK, but quite where, I do not know.

 

MM

[Vox Humana]

He was ... a towering figure in the re introduction of Renaissance music into the UK

I'm afraid he was nothing of the sort, though he does deserve due recognition for the revelatory airings of this music that he gave at Westminster Cathedral. It is true that he was the General Editor of the Carnegie Trust's monumental nine-volume "library edition" of Tudor Church Music. However, he proved to be unreliable, if not a complete charlatan, and was removed from the position in 1922, shortly before the printed volumes began to appear. The full, sorry saga was discovered by Richard Turbet, who recounted it in two articles in Music and Letters - 76/4 (Nov 1995) and 81/3 (Aug 2000).

 

Terry evidently valued the enhancement to his reputation that the general editorship gave him, but he did little to earn it and his credibility never got off the ground (there had even been some opposition to his appointment). His failings were set out at length in a friendly, but nevertheless extremely frank letter that Percy Buck (one of the TCM editorial team) wrote to Terry in June 1921. He reminded Terry that, a year previously, he had taken him aside and warned him plainly that his (Terry's) reputation was "perilously near zero" and that he was hazarding that of his fellow editors. Buck then proceeded to go to town on the final text of a Taverner volume that Terry had submitted:

 

1) It was incomplete (Terry had previously admitted this, but had done nothing about it);

 

2) A considerable part of the work was "someone else's transcript, full or errors, of another copy which in turn was so inaccurate as to be quite out of court as the basis of a critical edition";

 

3) The scores that were in Terry's hand had been made from copied parts. Terry had not consulted the originals and, when rotographs had been sent to him, he had made no use of them at all;

 

4) Some of the mass movements had been only partially underlaid and there were three passages in one mass that had not even been scored;

 

5) A three-part opening to an Agnus was lacking one of its voices;

 

6) The application of musica ficta was inconsistent;

 

7) There were so many errors in copying that one movement of a mass had needed over 70 corrections;

 

8) There were so many divergencies from the original that in one movement over 60 had been noted;

 

9) Buck had, at Terry's request, sketched some missing tenor parts without underlay: "I just tried to spot entries and fill up with adequate notes". Terry had done no work to these, but had merely recopied the textless sketches that Buck had supplied.

 

Buck considered the whole thing "most discreditable"; competent scholars would pronounce it "a disgrace to English scholarship". The volume in question would need to be rigorously overhauled. He could not imagine that, in common honesty, Terry would want to remain Editor-in-Chief. "You know, and you know that we know, that from the beginning you have been no Editor in the true sense at all, that all the real work that has been done for this Edition has been done by others, and that your Committee's chief job all along has been to get any honest work out of you at all." Ouch!

 

At a Music Sub-Committee meeting the following May, E. H. Fellowes claimed that Terry had not been in touch with his fellow editors for twelve months, that he had done no editorial work and that his Taverner volume had had to be entirely re-edited. He did not want Terry's name on the title page. The committee, its patience exhausted, decided that Terry must go. Terry eventually resigned in June.

 

Sorry, this is nothing to do with Terry's pupils!

[innate]

I'm afraid he was nothing of the sort, though he does deserve due recognition for the revelatory airings of this music that he gave at Westminster Cathedral. It is true that he was the General Editor of the Carnegie Trust's monumental nine-volume "library edition" of Tudor Church Music. However, he proved to be unreliable, if not a complete charlatan, and was removed from the position in 1922, shortly before the printed volumes began to appear. The full, sorry saga was discovered by Richard Turbet, who recounted it in two articles in Music and Letters - 76/4 (Nov 1995) and 81/3 (Aug 2000).

 

<snip>

 

Sorry, this is nothing to do with Terry's pupils!

Thank you so much for posting this, Vox. I had no idea.

[AJJ]

Sorry, this is nothing to do with Terry's pupils!

 

But fascinating all the same - thanks!

 

A

[Vox Humana]

2) A considerable part of the work was "someone else's transcript, full or errors, of another copy which in turn was so inaccurate as to be quite out of court as the basis of a critical edition"

It would be interesting to know whether "someone else's transcript" still exists somewhere. Terry had suggested an informal editorial committee for Tudor Church Music consisting of Percy Buck, Edmund Fellowes, Alick Ramsbotham, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Charles Wood, Godfrey Arkwright and Cecilia Stainer (Sir John's daughter). The first four of these eventually became the formal editorial committee. I am not aware that the last three played any part in the project, though I suppose none of them can be entirely ruled out as the "someone else". There is, however, a fourth and much more likely contender.

 

The Tudor Church Music project was the brainchild of the educationist and musicologist Dr (later Sir) Henry Hadow and it was he who first sounded out Terry's interest in becoming the General Editor. In 1917 Hadow wrote to the Carnegie trustees requesting financial assistance for a young organist/composer who they had helped a month previously by sponsoring the publication of one of his compositions, but who was now very seriously ill and was currently without any employment or income. The request was rather irregular in that the Carnigie Trust existed to support projects of national importance, not individual welfare, but the trustees solved the problem in a pragmatic way, noting in their minutes that "It was decided to employ Mr [Herbert] Howells at a suitable salary in connexion with the editing of Tudor and Elizabethan music, and that arrangements should be made with Dr Terry to that end. It is understood that Dr Terry would very much welcome the suggestion." This sponsorship ran from 1 July 1917 until 1920 when Howells joined the RCM, so it is not at all impossible that his were the transcripts cited by Buck in his letter of 1921.