Shorter Notices
THE coinciding of the golden years of the revival of English music of the Tudor period with Sir Richard Terry's years as musical director at Westminster Cathedral was no mere chance. Scholars and composers contributed their own invaluable gifts to the move- ment, but it was Terry who actually performed the music, day in and day out, in the setting- for which it was originally intended. It is a bitter reflection that what seemed to have all the promise of a permanent new musical interest in England, and made Westminster for a time a musical model to which all Europe turned, should have proved to have been little more than a fashion imposed, very largely, by the ardent enthusiasm of a single man. I should say, at a guess, that something like three quarters of the music re-discovered and performed by Terry at Westminster has disappeared from the repertory there and everywhere else. It is theoretically " known," and most of it is published, but it has returned to the library shelf. Miss Andrews tells the story of Terry's musical career very well, and traces the history of his musical enthusiasm from its earliest beginnings. Her excessive tact and reticence about the stormier side of his life, both public and private, make the book incomplete as a picture of the man himself, but as a tribute to his work at Westminster it is admirably conceived and carried out.
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