Tales from Trinity

It seems that the fuss which surrounded the appointment of Stephen Layton as organist and choirmaster of Trinity College, Cambridge some 15 months ago has not gone away. Rumour and Lunchtime O’Boulez have it that some of the fellows of Trinity itself have finally become queasy at the high-handedness of their colleagues, to the extent that they want to ‘roll back’ the terms of Layton’s employment. One wonders how the legality of such a move might play out, but then the whole point of this story is that Trinity gets what it wants in every situation, because it is stinking rich.

My original complaint, made in this column, was that the people representing Trinity at the interviews for the job Layton eventually got felt entitled to say one thing in public but do another in private, without any explanation. They published a list of precise requirements for their new organist, got themselves a talented shortlist of applicants, rejected the lot, moved all the goalposts, upped the money considerably and bought a superstar. At the time the bad feeling was concentrated on the spectacle of Trinity thumbing its nose at the wider musical scene; the needle more recently has come from within Cambridge. By spending its money on Layton and his desire to put Trinity above the other colleges in the pecking order for applicants, Trinity has fallen foul of a local sensibility. One music-faculty member is reported to have said, ‘It’s typical of Trinity. I don’t know what they’ve paid to get Layton, but they’re the richest college in Cambridge. They’ve always thought they could walk over everyone else, and the way they’ve disregarded the inter-collegiate rules — rules that exist by gentleman’s agreement — has shocked the rest of us.’