Studies in English Organ Music

Iain Quinn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138059139
• eBook ISBN: 9781351672399
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Studies in English Organ Music is a collection of essays by expert authors that examines key areas of the repertoire in the history of organ music in England. The essays on repertoire are placed alongside supporting studies in organ building and liturgical practice in order to provide a comprehensive contextualization. An analysis of the symbiotic relationship between the organ, liturgy, and composers reveals how the repertoire has been shaped by these complementary areas and developed through history. This volume is the first collection of specialist studies related to the field of English organ music.

Part 1

Instruments

1 The English organ – an overview

Nicholas Thistlethwaite

Introduction

The main focus of this chapter will be the development of the English organ over the last two centuries. However, in order to establish the point from which that development began, and to provide representative stop-lists of instruments relating to repertoire discussed in the following chapters, it is prefaced with a brief account of the evolution of the instrument in the early modern era (from 1600). Those requiring a more detailed treatment are referred to Stephen Bicknell’s The history of the English organ.¹ Published in 1996, this remains the fullest account of the present state of knowledge about its subject, though subsequent research by others, much of which has appeared in successive issues of the Journal of the British Institute of Organ Studies, amplifies and occasionally modifies some of Bicknell’s conclusions.

Any attempt to construct a history of the English organ before 1800 is hampered by a number of factors. The disuse, destruction and outlawing of organs during the Reformation period – beginning with Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s and concluding with Parliament’s order ‘for the speedy demolishing of all organs’ in 1644 – has left England bereft of the early survivals that are still to be found in most other European countries. Documentation for this period is also sparse, though a handful of contracts and accounts cast light on the history of particular instruments. Two hundred years later, the Victorian revolution in organ design led to the reconstruction or (more usually) the replacement of eighteenth-century organs with their long keyboard compasses, modest tonal schemes, unequal temperament and lack of pedals; only a few organs escaped intact. In the circumstances, the survival and recent restoration of instruments such as those in Adlington Hall (anon., c.1693), St Botolph, Aldgate (Renatus Harris, 1704), St George, Southall (Abraham Jordan, 1723), St Helen, Bishopsgate (Thomas Griffin, 1744), Christ Church, Spitalfields (Richard Bridge, 1735), and Lulworth Castle Chapel (Richard Seede, c.1785), together with a small number of consort and chamber organs from the same period, is of great significance. Recent projects to reconstruct earlier ‘lost’ organs have also made an important contribution to our understanding: the ‘Tudor organs’ based on fragments of two sixteenth-century soundboards from Suffolk have offered new insights into the construction and use of organs on the eve of the Reformation. Yet we still know little about the tone, speech characteristics, key mechanisms or winding of the organs played by major figures such as Byrd, Gibbons, Blow or Purcell.

Despite this, the general outline of English organ history is now reasonably well established even if many details remain frustratingly elusive.

The revival of organ-building following the upheavals of the sixteenth-century Reformation is particularly associated with the activities of Thomas Dallam (1575–c.1630) and his son, Robert (d.1665). Their church organs were transposing instruments,² with duplicated chorus registers, and no mixtures or (probably) reeds. The most ambitious had two keyboards, Great and Chair, the latter placed behind the player and intended to accompany the verse sections of the anthems and canticle settings increasingly heard in the Chapel Royal and cathedral and collegiate foundations. One of the first of these was Thomas Dallam’s organ for King’s College, Cambridge (16...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of music examples
• Series Editors’ preface
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Instruments
• Part 2 Liturgy
• Part 3 Repertoire
• Index