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W<\/span>hat does the term \u2018English organ\u2019 conjure up in your mind? Rich sounds in a generous acoustic, underpinning a cathedral choir? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The pomp and ceremony of a royal occasion or the Last Night of the Proms<\/a><\/strong>? Or maybe just background muzak to a church service or civic event: sometimes saccharine, sometimes bombastic? The English organ has fulfilled all of these functions and more, but it has its own musical significance, too. At its best, it is the medium of some of the finest national music ever written, and its story is also a fascinating if quirky mirror of our musical and social history.<\/span><\/p>\n Although the earliest known reference to an English organ dates from the tenth century, when St Dunstan gave an organ to Malmesbury Abbey, nothing exists of an instrument in unaltered form until the 1680s or so. But with a bit of digging around, we can work out what some of these earlier organs sounded like. And so our musical story begins in the 1520s.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Our knowledge of the sort of organs played by Byrd<\/a><\/strong> and Tallis<\/a><\/strong> and the so-called \u2018English virginalists\u2019 was, until recently, limited to the odd surviving stop-list and much conjecture. Why do no organs survive from this era? Sadly, wanton destruction and changing tastes are to blame. <\/span><\/p>\n The 16th-century English Reformation under Henry VIII<\/a> <\/strong>saw the destruction or terminal decline of many English organs. Unlike some of the impressive and relatively large organs found in mainland Europe\u2019s churches and cathedrals at this time, English Tudor organs were modest in size and expectation. A handful of stops were all that was required to accompany or play alongside the choir. It could simply be that they were not perceived as impressive enough to be saved from zealous Reformers.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1977, a man renovating his farmhouse in Wetheringsett, Suffolk, was intrigued by a piece of timber that had served as a door in centuries gone by. Why did it have rows of grooves and holes? Eventually it was identified as an organ soundboard (on which stood the pipes) dating from around 1525, which enabled organ builders Goetze and Gwynn to recreate a Tudor organ in 2001. They were able to do this because the soundboard of an organ tells you how many pipes and stops the organ had, and therefore allows for a complete reconstruction.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The resulting \u2018Wetheringsett\u2019 organ reveals some fascinating aspects about organ playing of the time. The very high pitch has implications as to how we perform solo pieces of Byrd et al on more recent instruments, suggesting that any piece using the whole tessitura of the organ would have sounded nearly a fifth higher than notated. With that in mind, there\u2019s no doubt that Tudor organists would as a matter of course have had to transpose accompaniments to match the choir\u2019s pitch<\/a><\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n And what did these instruments sound like? It turns out that English organs had a sound similar to southern European ones, with a thin, overtone-heavy tone akin to a stringed instrument \u2013 nothing like the grand tone of those found in Germany and the Netherlands.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>More destruction followed of those organs that had survived the Reformation, due to the next significant upheaval: the English Civil War. As Cromwellian puritanical zeal swept through the country, organs were once again under pressure (although the hypocrisy of Cromwell installing an organ in the Great Hall at Hampton Court, for his own enjoyment and edification, is telling). Distressing and reckless though these times were, they did herald a new style of music \u2013 and a new style of organ to match.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Organ builders such as Robert Dallam, who had been working in exile in northern France, returned to construct organs for English institutions. <\/span><\/p>\n The new organs built by Dallam and his contemporaries were fitted with extra gallic sounds: colourful trumpets, cremonas, vox humanas, cornets, and mixture stops to extend the harmonic series upwards. An extra manual (creating the new \u2018double organ\u2019) began to be more commonplace, and grew to be part of the soundworld of Blow, Purcell<\/a><\/strong> and Locke: Englishness influenced by the French fashions of court life. Inevitably perhaps, with different musical expectations, pitch standards and the like, earlier 16th-century organs were neglected and replaced with something more fashionable.<\/span><\/p>\n The 18th century saw a move to a more refined and understated tone, along with an extra dynamic flexibility in small \u2018swell\u2019 divisions, but essentially the English organ did not notably change in its conception and basic elements until the 1840s. Hints of what were to come can be found in the fine 1829 Bishop organ of St James\u2019s, Bermondsey, London (then the largest church organ in England): there are some aids to changing the stops while playing, a broadening of the tonal palette and a slight loudening of the sound. And its pedals \u2013 viewed with either disinterest or suspicion by many of the English organ fraternity of\u00a0 the time \u2013 were duplicated by an extra manual at the side, allowing for a second player to perform the pedal line.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe history of the organ in England<\/h2>\n
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Wetheringsett\u2019 organ <\/span><\/h2>\n
What happened after the Reformation?<\/h2>\n
The development of the organ\u2019s pedals<\/span><\/h2>\n