Adam Wills Begley

In 1917, Herbert Howells received a grant from the Carnegie Trust to assist in editing hundreds of Tudor manuscripts for performance. Howells often spoke of the influence this experience had on his compositional work: “All through my life I’ve had this strange feeling that I belonged somehow to the Tudor period–not only musically but in every way.” Musicologist Jonathan Clinch has noted that the relationship between "the Renaissance of the 16th century … and the so-called ‘English musical renaissance’ [of the 20th century]–is at the heart of Howells’s church music," but the direct manifestations of this technical and aesthetic debt remain uncharted. My research focuses on locating the manuscripts Howells edited, analysing their musical content, and comparing them with Howells’s own works to identify the specific ways in which the composer’s study of Tudor repertoire influenced his music. In a broader sense, my research aims to investigate the process whereby artworks from past eras directly influence the creative process of artists in the contemporary era—and the ways in which editing shapes the editor.