Geoffrey Cuming

Geoffrey John Cuming (1917–24 March 1988) was a

With Francis F. Clough, Cuming edited The World's Encyclopedia of Record Music, which was published in 1952. Their text called "huge" by music historian Harold C. Schonberg, the scope of Clough and Cuming's discography was only preceded by The Gramophone Shop Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music by Robert Donaldson Darrell, which was first published in 1936. Valentine Britten, the librarian of the BBC's Gramophone Library, referred to Clough and Cuming's work in 1956 as the library's "Bible", noting it as "authorative, and enabling one to give immediate, and usually conclusive check, on recordings deleted or extant".^[3][4] The book was criticized by Richard S. Hill in a review of its third supplement (published with E. A. Hughes and Angela Noble in 1957) for its "flamboyantly inaccurate title", saying that it was not an "encyclopedia" but rather a "discography" which only provided coverage of music from the Western world, though Hill added that "once past the title, my unhappiness evaporates, and everything seems worthy of praise".^[5]

In 1961, Cuming edited an edition of The Durham Book, an annotated

Cuming wrote A History of Anglican Liturgy, first published by Macmillan in 1969. C. W. Dugmore, Colin Buchanan, and other reviewers compared it to Francis Procter's 1855 A History of the Book of Common Prayer and Walter Frere's 1901 revision of Procter (known as "Procter and Frere").^[8][9] Dugmore praised A History of Anglican Liturgy as "an authoritative and readable account" and as "an admirable supplement" to both "Procter and Frere" and Frank Edward Brightman's The English Rite.^[10] Buchanan, reviewing the first edition, criticized some "minutiae" but called it "a model of historical, and often original, scholarship".^[11] Buchanan later positively referenced the book's second edition, published in 1982, as a notable historic resource.^[12]: 667 This second edition featured details on Anglican liturgies through 1980, including the Alternative Service Book that Cuming played a part in producing.^[2]

During his final decade, Cuming resumed editing volumes on early Christian liturgies.

While Vicar of Humberstone and for his experience as a Book of Common Prayer historian, Cuming served as a member of the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England.[15]^[16]: 243 In this role, Cuming worked on the Alternative Service series and Modern Liturgical Texts.^[17]: 172 Cuming was one of five people responsible for editing the Alternative Service Book, the first liturgical text authorized for use alongside the Book of Common Prayer in the Church of England since the first Act of Uniformity.^{[16]: 359–360} He also served as consultant to the 1981–1986 Liturgical Commission that ultimately led to the publication of Common Worship.^[18]

Cuming was influenced in his promotion of liturgical revision by Gregory Dix's Shape of the Liturgy. Cuming expressed that the 1662 prayer book's communion office "obscured and confused" Jesus's actions at the Last Supper, ignored Jesus's resurrection, lacked substantial reference to the Holy Spirit and the Old Testament, and had archaic language. Cuming was also concerned with the adaption of liturgical music to the new rites. He expressed belief that Series Two rites lent themselves to previous musical settings from John Merbecke of the 16th century to Martin Shaw of the 20th century, but found Series Three rites presented musicians a "completely new set of texts". Cuming, "a champion of the new liturgies", was criticized by church music historian Martin Thomas as failing to communicate the basis for the revisions, something "indicative of a wider failure of communication between scholars engaged in revision and the clergy who worked with the new material".^[19]

For the October 1966 issue of