It is very common to hear in Anglo-American / Anglican organ circles – from organists, organbuilders, consultants, and writers of these and other professions – that the church organ’s primary purpose is to ‘accompany’ or to ‘play the service’, to accompany ‘the’ Anglican liturgy. This role is usually, explicitly or implicitly, and sometimes with a whiff of sanctimony, contrasted with playing ‘the repertoire’. Even some commentators capable of taking a broader view seem not to be able to escape this outlook and its component assumptions entirely. 

Today ‘to play the service’ almost without exception means to play orchestrally or pianistically oriented anthems and canticles by Anglophone composers with a center of gravity lying somewhere near 1928, along with Anglican chant, choral responses, and perhaps (perhaps moreso in American parish churches ambitious to imitate this aesthetic?) heavily ‘orchestrated’ congregational hymn-tunes and ‘atmospheric’ improvisation, for which purposes the huge, late- or post-Romantic instrument with large Swell, orchestral Solo, and extensive registration aids – almost certainly operated by electric remote control, given its usual location in one or more holes in the wall – is the assumed norm or desire. 

This aesthetic has had remarkable staying power: Cecil Clutton noted seventy years ago that ‘accompanimental considerations have long been the dominant factor in the tonal design of English organs. The great majority of English organists are accompanists first and last. In the course of more than a century they have built up a remarkable aesthetic around the Church of England liturgy’ (Organ Institute Quarterly, 1954). (Clutton goes on to condemn the same organists’ ‘almost complete lack of rhythm, [lack of] variety of touch and incessant changes of registration’.) 

The idea that the Anglican organ’s job is to ‘accompany’, however, predates, and was also stated in opposition to, the nineteenth-century changes to the organ and its aesthetic the results of which are now assumed in most uses of the term – changes almost all of which took place first in the concert hall for playing transcriptions of orchestral parts of oratorios in gigantic performances, were pursued further for playing orchestral works as organ solos, and then gave rise to organ and choral music written in the style and texture of orchestral transcriptions.

 John Jebb, writing in 1843, said:

I must avow an utter distaste for these enormous music-mills [i.e., factories]. Their barbarous crash is more fit for Nebuchadnezzar’s festival than for that sweet and grave accompaniment for which our old Cathedral organs were fully sufficient. Modern instruments may have gained in loudness, but have certainly lost in sweetness and equality of tone. The English Cathedral organ, it must be remembered, is intended to be an accompaniment of a choir, and is not a vehicle for Voluntaries and Concertos, as abroad, where its choral use is generally subordinate.

And in 1847 John Sutton wrote:

The reason why these beautiful (old) instruments are so often destroyed is that the clergy and those in authority are persuaded by their organists that the instruments in question are not fit to play upon; by which they mean that it is impossible to show off upon them in the most approved fashion, for they have neither pedals, swell, or any of those complicated contrivances with which the modern Music Mills are crowded. Every lover of true Cathedral Music must have experienced how much these modern alterations and additions to the organ mar the effect of that most devotional manner of performing the church service. In the chanting of the psalms, the attention is continually drawn from the voices by the perpetual changing of stops and clattering of composition pedals, for the modern cathedral organist scarcely ever accompanies six verses on the same stops, or even on the same row of keys [i.e. manual keyboard], and keeps up a perpetual thundering with the pedals throughout the psalms, when perhaps the choir he is accompanying, consists of ten little boys, and six or at the most eight men, three or four of whom are either disabled by old age, or a long continued habit of drunkenness.

Even as late as 1879, W. H. Monk wrote:

 Being dead against the modern fashion of forcing tone, at cost of Quality; of changing the mellow, rich, and sober tones of our English Cathedral Organs of the best type, into the likeness of German and French Instruments of the most pronounced kind... I most devoutly hope that the [Westminster] Abbey Organ – always renowned among its compeers – is not about to be sacrificed to the mad, and reckless, demand for more noise... But I have another and deeper quarrel with this tendency. Our Cathedral Organs are eminently, and chiefly, for accompanimental purposes; they should support, enfold, and dignify the voices of the Choir. All this our old, and best instruments of modern build, most perfectly accomplish. But not so the Willisean monster; which... has found entrance into several of our Cathedrals – alack the day! This Machine, with its heavy wind-pressures and obstreperous style of voicing, is totally unfit to accompany an average Choir; or, generally, to do aught but stifle and drown it. Cathedral Choirs are notoriously small and miserably inadequate to the requirements of the noble spaces in which they are placed; were they usually formed of hundreds of voices... there then might be a shred of propriety in the present rage for Stentor-like Stops, and Brobdingnagian Organs; but – as things really are, the introduction of the noisy, blatant, coarse style which is now too much puffed off, and admired, is, to my feeling – and I venture to say in the judgement of many other musicians of far more weight than my poor self – a thing to be greatly – deeply – deplored. 

     (Thistlethwaite, The making of the Victorian organ, 415)

Indeed Peter Williams suggests that the accompanimental role dates back much farther: ‘From the stop-lists alone one might think that the English organ tone was, at any rate before the Smith–Harris generation [which latter organ-type Williams suggests was essentially congregational in purpose], closely related to the Italian organ in its two vocal ideals, i.e. for the main manual to sing as a voice and for the subsidiary manual to accompany the voice’ (New Grove Organ). (From the stop-lists alone the very early English organ actually looks remarkably like, say, St-Savin, apart from the very wide discrepancy in pitch.) Elsewhere Williams called the old English cathedral organs ‘overgrown organi di legno’ (‘A newly discovered Handel organ’, The Musical Times, Dec 1976).

These accounts make it clear that the post-Romantic English organ, literature, and playing style are far from the only means by which ‘the service’ may be ‘accompanied’. But I want to pursue further this question of the organ’s role – which is of course bound up with questions regarding the form and conduct of the liturgy and its music. 

The first thing to note is that all of the above authors, writing in or about whatever era and about choirs of whatever size or quality, were talking about cathedral organs, not parochial ones; it quickly becomes clear that, for those who espouse an ‘accompanimental’ role for the organ, ‘the’ Anglican liturgy takes place in cathedrals – and college chapels, and in a few select parishes – with dedicated professional-and/or-student choirs rehearsing, and perhaps singing, multiple times each week.

Second, to these writers, ‘the service’ which the organ ‘accompanies’ is the Office, not the Eucharist; the form of Office in question is, moreover, that of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. In this model, stripped of the variety and interpretative matrix afforded by the  historic proper antiphons, responsories, and hymns, and with long lessons generally read without note and various interpolations by the Officiant, it is little wonder that minor elements (responses) are elaborated to ever higher degrees; the heart of the Office (psalmody) is not only set in a manner that works against its effective and efficient recitation but is also too often adorned with puerile effects; the climax (the Gospel canticle) becomes a set-piece by virtue of its scope and style; and an appendix (the anthem) vies for supremacy with it. This form of Office easily (or uneasily) becomes a kind of sacred concert or variety show, and thus unsurprisingly ‘the service’ has very long since come to mean, in many musicians’ minds, the choral component, and not the liturgy as a whole. In such circumstances – the congregation being no factor at all – the organ indeed has little opportunity for any role but ‘accompaniment’.

The musical tradition just outlined is characterized by a long history, strong identity, and a significant repertory. I do not argue that no one should embrace it: only that no one should think that everyone should embrace it, or that those who do not are somehow less, or un-, Anglican.

My world, on the other hand – to give only one example – is quite different. I work in a parish worshipping in what is, despite its downtown location and historic status, architecturally and aesthetically a fairly humble village church; the Sunday Eucharist, not the Daily Office (however much I – and the Prayer Book – might wish for its observance), is ‘the service’. The choir is modestly sized and mostly volunteer, and there is little scope or desire on anyone’s part for it to be otherwise. Most of the music – Ordinary items, hymns, Psalm-antiphon, Gospel acclamation – is congregational; it is led and supported by the choir and cantors both together, and in responsorial dialogue, with the people, though choir and schola each have their own roles as well (anthems, the occasional hymn-verse; the proper Introits). The ceremonial context, the makeup of the choir, and the congregational nature of most of the music-making all impose certain limitations on the scope of the literature to be sung. The organ indeed supports not only most choral but also most congregational singing; it also introduces and, as the ceremonial requires, follows most sung items with short pieces of many eras and styles.

In these at least equally Anglican circumstances the organ’s role is not limited to ‘accompaniment’, but nor is it precisely about ‘performing’ ‘the literature’ according to some false dichotomy. In my work the organ’s role is, within the constraints of the circumstances in question, as complementary to the sung music as possible, deploying ‘the literature’ that has been written for liturgical purposes, nearly all of it based upon the sung music with which it is juxtaposed or entwined. Very little of it requires manipulation of stops or swell shutters or a very large instrument, though I happily use both the range of mutations and the collection of 8' foundations I happen to have available.

Could this role for the organ (and that of the singing forces), and the ramifications thereof, be even further fleshed out?

It is possible that liturgical musicians have not yet got to grips with what Eucharistic music – even the broadly ‘traditional’ – should even be in the twenty-first century. It is also possible that I am of a generation that missed such discussion of the subject as might have taken place during the twentieth-century heyday of liturgical reform: the kinds of challenges implicitly laid down by the likes of Arthur Hutchings, who nearly sixty years ago argued for the congregational use of chant and at least implicitly posed questions regarding the role, perhaps even the very existence, of parish choirs (Church Music in the Nineteenth Century, 1967). Perhaps there are other helpful points of departure: the century-old plea of Winfred Douglas for liturgical music that, among other things, takes its form from the text and its texture from the voice, for ‘perfect art in small and novel forms’ (‘The relation of church music to ecclesiastical architecture’, 1921); the witness of such anthologies as the Yattendon Hymnal and Songs of Syon, which placed a classic Anglican congregational repertory in the company of Roman, Reformed, and Lutheran traditions with which it had various points of contact; mid-twentieth-century music (and doubtless related writing) from Lutheran and Reformed traditions then renewing ties with their roots, to name a few. In my own work I certainly take the mono- and polyphonic vocal repertories of these traditions alongside those of the Anglican, as well as vernacular monophonies in the same vein, as fair game, and as the basis for the organ music that surrounds them. The chanting of the basic elements of the Mass – dialogues, lessons, Creed, prayers – would further establish the framework within which melody and polyphony (both vocal and organ) might appropriately operate; the chant might be elaborated and reflected in a variety of styles and by a variety of forces in various dialogues and layers commensurate with the given resources, but it would be immediately clear what kinds of music would be better suited to sacred concerts, informal gatherings, or other important and valuable contexts.

As for the Office, its modern form, at least in the Episcopal Church, allows for the reclaiming of antiphons to the invitatory, psalms, and canticles; the Hymnal provides a (limited) selection of Office hymns; and in a parochial context it is plain that at least the responses and probably the hymn – if not the psalmody itself – should be chanted congregationally. The amount of psalmody appointed at each Office in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is in no way burdensome and requires nothing more than the eight plainsong tones for its recitation; the canticles likewise can be sung very satisfactorily to their more elaborate tones, or, on special occasions, polyphonic verses for choir and/or organ can be alternated with the plainsong, as indeed they can in the Office hymn. Chant can certainly be harmonized, but harmony can easily distract from and distort the recitation of the sacred text, which is the purpose of the chant. Through-composed settings, by contrast, generally seek to interpret rather than to present text; liturgical music by and large reflects the textual forms and allows meaning to speak for itself.

The music that is likely to fit these constraints and opportunities – modest in scope and difficulty, careful in craft, strongly rooted in traditional techniques yet addressing present needs – is unlikely to appear on recordings, music lists of professional choirs, or perhaps even publishers’ websites, being instead produced ad hoc, presented locally, and shared informally if at all. The kind of organ that such music will call for – and one hopes will be inspired by – will likewise be modest in scope, careful in craft, strongly rooted in traditional techniques, and addressed to present needs, and might likewise be worked out in all kinds of ways.

The kind of situation in which this might be possible was described by organbuilder Lawrence Phelps in a 1963 talk on ‘Creative church acoustics’ (one need not imagine that an organ meeting this description must sound like a Phelps instrument):

Of course, this solution [an appropriately small organ] can only apply... for an ideal case. It would give real satisfaction only where the congregation and the musicians involved have made all the ‘right’ decisions either by choice or by instinct concerning not only the physical aspects of the organ installation and other musical facilities but also with regard to their whole musical program. It is typical of such a situation that all overly ambitious ideas as to the character and magnitude of the music to be performed have given way to a definition of the musical needs which is entirely commensurate with the size of the church and its appropriately proportioned musical resource. This does not mean that the quality of the music or of the performance need in any way be compromised. On the contrary, the result will be a completely uncompromised and worshipful musical offering of exquisite taste.

It is possible to hear echoes of this attitude today (again, one need not imagine some German Baroque ideal to be the only relevant one in order to see the points): Jonathan Ambrosino, writing of the Richards, Fowkes & Co. organ at Duke Divinity Chapel, proposes a category of ‘the “early music” liturgical musician’ [but see my comment as to a broad interpretation of ‘pre-1800 modes of musicking’ in a previous post] to whom a relative wealth of classical foundation work ‘offers fertile ground’; the organ’s ‘possibilities provoke’ (Choir & Organ, Nov/Dec 2009) – the latter not least perhaps by adding Swell shutters and electric combination action to a German Baroque tonal concept. The Taylor & Boody instrument at Marquand Chapel, Yale, he says, ‘express[es] an eagerness not only to be heard in performance, but also to support singing from within the congregation...’; the instrument is ‘ideally suited for the exploration of old and new avenues in congregational song – chief among them, of course, the singing of chorales, psalms, and concerted music in exactly the same manner as Northern Europeans of centuries past’ (C&O, Jan/Feb 2008). Simon Harden, writing of the Van Eeken organ at Holy Trinity, Crosshaven (County Cork, Ireland), notes the ‘departure from the obsession with the miniature cathedral model’ (C&O, Jan/Feb 2012) (a model familiar on these shores, flagged by Ambrosino as ‘that American ambition that parish music should adopt cathedral grandeur’ (C&O, Sep 2019)). These and other writers also speak repeatedly of the expressivity available through sensitive key action controlling pipes capable of responsive and variable speech, as well as the welcome discipline and creative constraints established by the classical instrument, and the important differences between that and the neo-Baroque organ of yesteryear. 

For all the size and much-heralded ‘flexibility’ of the instruments often promoted today under the heading of Anglican ‘accompaniment’, their purpose seems surprisingly narrow and their artistic merits few. It seems that truly elegant instruments, a robustly complementary role for the organ, literature that is fully idiomatic to organ and liturgy, and of course thoughtfully, prayerfully, and richly executed liturgy go hand in hand. The details may vary, and must be considered afresh in every generation including our own, but this seems the way forward if twentieth-century efforts to renew liturgy, liturgical music, organbuilding, and organ-playing are to continue, and to bear fruit, in the twenty-first.