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.