WHEN orchestra directors hit a major snag in their plans to replicate the music of the Queen's Coronation as part of this year's 50th anniversary celebrations, they turned to a distinguished musician from Craven.

The New Queen's Hall Orchestra wanted total authenticity for its forthcoming concerts of the Coronation music - which has never been played as a complete programme since its only performance in Westminster Abbey on June 2 1953.

But, after dusting off the country's greatest collection of state music, there were two major problems - five invaluable fanfares had gone missing and there was no orchestral score for key vocal sections.

"There were never any plans for this music to be played again so the fanfares were never published," said the orchestra's artistic director John Boyden. "They only ever existed as original handwritten manuscripts and we could find no trace of them."

So Mr Boyden turned to Embsay composer and conductor Arthur Butterworth, who spent his early career as a classical trumpeter and had first-hand experience of the pre-war orchestral style in which the NQHO performs.

"The fanfares were mainly short pieces of two to three minutes and some were just little flourishes," explained Mr Butterworth. "They were very effective and to lose them would have been a real blow.

"It was thought they would be fairly easy to trace but we had quite a job on our hands. The problem was no-one ever envisaged another performance."

The Royal Library at Windsor had no idea where the fanfares were. Neither had the Royal College of Music. The Royal Academy and Westminster Abbey were as mystified as EMI, the BBC and publishing house Novello.

But Mr Butterworth remembered that trumpeters from the Royal Military School of Music had been involved in the Coronation - so he contacted the archivist at Kneller Hall in Twickenham.

Within days the original manuscripts arrived at his home - tattered, torn, pale and faded. He transcribed them and set about making a set of 14 parts for horns, trumpets, trombones and timpani.

Then, helped by his acquaintance with the former Westminster Abbey organist Sir Ernest Bullock who wrote the fanfares, Mr Butterworth tracked down further manuscripts and, after studying an original recording of the coronation, painstakingly rescored them for orchestra.

"In effect Arthur put this music together backwards," said Mr Boyden. "He started with the words and then recreated the music - despite hearing it, for the first time, 50 years after the event. Without the fanfares, we would have a much diminished event."

Mr Butterworth was given a standing ovation at the first concert at Fairfields Hall, Croydon, narrated by Sir Bernard Ingham. A second concert was due to take place at Guildford Cathedral last night (Thursday).

But even though the project is now complete there will be no sitting back for Mr Butterworth, who celebrates his 80th birthday this summer.

He has just completed his fifth symphony, which will be premiered in Manchester in October, he has been commissioned to write a new piece of music for the tuba, he teaches a potential conductor at Skipton's Ermysted's Grammar School and lectures in band mastership at Accrington and Rossendale College.

Asked whether he ever planned to retire, he said: "Oh no although I would like to do other things, such as more painting."