Organ Building In Georgian And Victorian England

Established for the building of keyboard instruments, by the mid-1790s the workshop of brothers Robert and William Gray had become one of the leading organ-makers in London, with instruments in St Paul's, Covent Garden and St Martin-in-the-Fields. Under William's son John Gray, the firm built some of the largest English organs of the 1820s and 1830s, as well as exporting major instruments to Boston and Charleston in the United States. In the early 1840s, with the marriage of John Gray's daughter to Frederick Davison - a member of the circle of Bach-enthusiasts around the composer Samuel Wesley - the firm became 'Gray & Davison'. Davison was a progressive figure who reformed workshop practices, commissioned a purpose-built organ factory in Euston Road and opened a branch workshop in Liverpool to exploit the booming market for church organs in Lancashire and the north-west. Under Davison's management, the firm was responsible for significant mechanical and musical innovations, especially in the design of concert organs. Instruments such as those built in the 1850s for Glasgow City Hall, the Crystal Palace and Leeds Town Hall were heavily influenced by contemporary French practice; they were designed to perform a repertoire dominated by orchestral transcriptions. Many of the instruments made by the firm have been lost or altered; but the surviving organs in St Anne, Limehouse (1851), Usk Parish Church (1861) and Clumber Chapel (1889) testify to the quality and importance of Gray & Davison's work. This book charts the firm's history from its foundation in 1772 to Frederick Davison's death in 1889. At the same time, it describes changes in musical taste and liturgical use and explores such topics as provincial music festivals, the town hall organ, domestic music-making and popular entertainment, the building of churches and the impact on church music of the Evangelical and Tractarian movements. It will appeal to organ aficionados interested in the evolution of the English organ in the later Georgian and Victorian eras, as well as other music scholars and cultural historians. NICHOLAS THISTLETHWAITE has written extensively on the history of the English organ and other aspects of English church music, and his book, The making of the Victorian organ (1990) is recognised as the standard work on the subject. He has acted as consultant for the restoration and rebuilding of organs, most recently at St Edmundsbury Cathedral and Christ Church

This 1996 book describes the history of organs built in England from AD 900 to the present day.

This important 1990 book provides a comprehensive survey of English organ building during the most innovative fifty years in its history.

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.

Contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship itself. Author Monique M. Ingalls argues that participatory worship music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations, or "modes of congregating". Through exploration of five of these modes--concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations--Singing the Congregation reinvigorates the analytic categories of "congregation" and "congregational music." Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology and congregational studies, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice--in this case, the musically-structured participatory activity known as "worship." "Congregational music-making" is thereby recast as a practice capable of weaving together a religious community both inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a powerful way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that comprise this global religious community. The interactions among the congregations reveal widespread conflicts over religious authority, carrying far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

William Sweetland was a Bath organ builder who flourished from c.1847 to 1902 during which time he built about 300 organs, mostly for churches and chapels in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, but also for locations scattered south of a line from the Wirral to the Wash. Gordon Curtis places this work of a provincial organ builder in the wider context of English musical life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An introductory chapter reviews the provincial musical scene and sets the organ in the context of religious worship, public concerts and domestic music-making. The book relates the biographical details of Sweetland's family and business history using material obtained from public and family records. Curtis surveys Sweetland's organ- building work in general and some of his most important organs in detail, with patents and other inventions explored. The musical repertoire of the provinces, particularly with regard to organ recitals, is discussed, as well as noting Sweetland's acquaintances, other organ builders, architects and artists. Part II of the book consists of a Gazetteer of all known organs by Sweetland organized by counties. Each entry contains a short history of the instrument and its present condition. Since there is no definitive published list of his work, and as all the office records were lost in a fire many years ago, this will be the nearest approach to a comprehensive list for this builder.

In its open improvisations, lapidary lyrics, errant melodies, and relentless pursuit of spontaneity, the British experimental band Henry Cow pushed rock music to its limits. Its rotating personnel, sprung from rock, free jazz, and orchestral worlds, synthesized a distinct sound that troubled genre lines, and with this musical diversity came a mixed politics, including Maoism, communism, feminism, and Italian Marxism. In Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem Benjamin Piekut tells the band’s story—from its founding in Cambridge in 1968 and later affiliation with Virgin Records to its demise ten years later—and analyzes its varied efforts to link aesthetics with politics. Drawing on ninety interviews with Henry Cow musicians and crew, letters, notebooks, scores, journals, and meeting notes, Piekut traces the group’s pursuit of a political and musical collectivism, offering up its history as but one example of the vernacular avant-garde that emerged in the decades after World War II. Henry Cow’s story resonates far beyond its inimitable music; it speaks to the avant-garde’s unpredictable potential to transform the world.

This volume of primary source material examines music and society in Britian during the ninteenth century. Sources explore religion, politics, class, and gender. The collection of materials are accompanied by an introduction by Rosemary Golding, as well as headnotes contextualising the pieces. This collection will be of great value to students and scholars.