Richard Terry was born in Ellington , Northumberland, in 1864. At the age of 11 he began to play the organ in the local church. Educated at various schools in South Shields , St. Albans and London , Terry lived in Jarrow in 1881 and worked as a pupil-teacher . Terry then spent seventeen months as a non-college student at Oxford (October 1887 to May 1889) and two years at Cambridge (1888-90), where he went as a non-college student but became choir teacher at King's College, Cambridge . There he also became music critic forThe Cambridge Review . At Cambridge he was greatly influenced by music professor Charles Villiers Stanford and King's Chapel organist , Arthur Henry Mann , who taught him the techniques of choral singing and the training of boys' voices.


Terry left Cambridge in 1890 without a degree. He was appointed schoolmaster: Music Teacher, Organist and School Choirmaster at Bedford County School, (renamed Elstow School in 1907 , Kempston , Bedfordshire. Then in 1892 he became organist at St. John's Cathedral , Antigua . Terry then taught and was director of music at Highgate School from September 1895 to December 1895 . Terry became a practicing Cathlolic in 1896 , the year he was appointed organist and director of music at Roman School Catholic Benedictine Lower Schoolin Somerset . Here he began the enormously important work of reviving the Latin music of English Tudor composers such as William Byrd and Thomas Tallis . He was greatly inspired by Dom Prosper Guéranger's revival of Gregorian chant at Solesmes Abbey in France, which was to become an important part of Downside's musical repertoire.

In 1899 Terry brought his Downside choir to Ealing for the opening of the new Benedictine church, where they sang William Byrd's ''Mass for Five Voices'' and motets by Palestrina , Philips and Allegri . The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan , was the preacher on this occasion and he decided that he would have Terry as his Master of Music in the newly built Westminster Cathedral .

Terry's time at Westminster Cathedral was marked by admiration and praise, but also by frustration. In 1911, he received an honorary doctorate from Durham University. The same year a special session on early English church music was held at the cathedral during the International Congress of Music, sung by the cathedral choir.

While Terry's relationship with Cardinal Vaughan was excellent, it was less so with his successor, Cardinal Francis Bourne . Bourne's differing attitudes toward church music, a continuing lack of funds to support the choir, the decline in the number of lay secretaries during and after World War I, and Terry's involvement in other matters outside the cathedral led to a prolonged period of tension.

Terry was forced to resign from the cathedral in 1924 after he was increasingly criticized for his erratic behavior and neglect of duty (including neglect of administrative work, weeks of vacation without leave, cancellation of choir rehearsals without notice, summary dismissal of lay secretaries). due process, assumption of too many responsibilities outside of his cathedral work, and tension due to his inconsistent approach to congregational singing at the cathedral). Nevertheless, during this period he was able to establish a choral tradition of great merit at the Cathedral, developing a repertoire of both Gregorian chants and polyphonic music . The choir's particular focus is on Renaissance polyphony which influenced the emerging school of 20th century English composers and the performance of church music in England.