Music Ministry Matters #5

            That being said, the elevated status bestowed upon the organ by the church was relatively late in coming.  The use of the medieval hydraulus was not approved for use in worship because of its identification with the theater and the circus. While organs had evolved by the 12^th century to be useful in supporting congregational singing, unaccompanied chant was still the ideal for worship.  The first modern pipe organs, powered by bellows rather than water pressure, began to appear in churches in the 14^th century. 

            The point here is not to deny the important and noble history of organ music in the church, but to put it in context.  Christians had been worshipping for a full millennium before most would ever encounter a pipe organ in worship.  Writers on church music in America’s mainline Protestant denominations before the 1960s commonly implied that the pipe organ was the quintessential and only universally appropriate musical instrument for worship and always would be.  The experience of the last quarter century tells us that this certainty was ill-placed. 

            The records of the Philadelphia’s First Presbyterian Church (or “Old Buttonwood Church”) provide this colorful description of the church’s worship in the first decade of the 18th century:

The “chaos” to which the observer referred was, no doubt, common to much colonial worship.  Regular singing advocates attempted to address it through educating congregants in the basics of music, but achieving order in the observance of worship was a common problem.  It was the small, cabinet-style organs being used by the Anglicans which seemed to be the most viable alternative to solve a vexing issue.   

                While the Puritans and other reformed denominations did not disavow instrumental music altogether, the early colonial attitude toward instrumental accompaniment for congregational singing approximated the distaste of the prophet Amos:

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs;

for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. [Amos 5:23, KJV]

                An unexpected boon to organ music in the United States came on April 18, 1806, when the United States Congress passed a Non-importation Act followed by the Embargo Act of 1807 outlawing the importation of goods from Great Britain.  The embargo immediately created a market for organs built on American soil.   Almost immediately a significant number of native-born organ builders started shops across New England. The first of the full-time factory-based organ builders was William Goodrich (1777 – 1833).  Elias Hook (1805-1881) and George Hook (1807-1880) followed, establishing the Hook & Hassyings Company in 1827 producing  over six hundred instruments during the forty years the company was in business.  

                Henry Erben (1800-1884) was another early 19th century organ builder who exerted great influence on organ music in America.  From the beginning he was recognized for the highest standards of craftsmanship.  Erben expanded his customer base far beyond New England, installing many instruments in the Southeast.  During the 1820s, Erben’s organ shop was producing an average of eight organs per year.  In 1854, the firm produced one hundred fifty-five instruments and employed forty-five workers in its shop.  Over the course of his life, Henry Erben produced over one thousand organs with installations throughout the United States and South America.

                Powering this growing market for pipe organs in the first half of the nineteenth century were several factors.  For New England and New York’s wealthier, elite churches, the historic place of the organ in worship was a prime consideration.  Also, among the general public the pipe organ was seen as something exotic.  In some instances, it appears larger instruments were purchased simply for the volume of sound they could produce.  In 1808 Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, New York, purchased its first organ:

This was not an isolated circumstance.  Nathaniel D. Gould wrote in his, Church Music in America (1853), that:

            The American organ building industry during first half of the nineteenth century was marked by continued growth with instruments becoming more sophisticated with each passing decade.  Unfortunately, the number of organs being manufactured far outpaced the availability of capable organists to play them.  Beginning in the 1850s, a new class of musicians – concert organists – began to draw audiences to recitals and attention in the press.  The dedication of the mammoth Boston Music Hall organ in 1863 drew national attention, and its dedicatory recital featured many of the most prominent concert organists of the time: John Henry Willcox (1827 – 1875), George Washburn Morgan (1822 – 1892), Whitney Eugene Thayer (1838 – 1889), Benjamin Johnson Lang (1837 – 1909), Samuel Parkman Tuckerman (1819 – 1890), and John Knowles Paine (1839 – 1906).  Not among them was the young Dudley Buck (1839 – 1905) who would become the most important American organist of the late 19^th century.  Buck’s influence continued well into twentieth century through his many students including: Frederick Grant Gleason (1848 -1903), William H. Neidlinger (1863 – 1924), Raymond Huntington Woodman (1861 – 1943), Harry Rowe Shelley (1858 – 1947).

The most famous of all the Buck progeny was Clarence Eddy (1851 – 1937) who would go on to become America’s first international touring artist of the organ.  The popularity of Buck, Eddy, and other concert organists of their generation was reflected in the work of post-World War II recording artists such as E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox. 

            The popularity of organists as concert artists did much to reinforce the view among mainline churches that the pipe organ wherever possible should be an essential component of worship.  Gradually, beginning in the late nineteenth century, American colleges and universities began offering applied instruction in organ performance, and few even offered electives in church music history, hymnology, and the like.  Perhaps the most visionary program was that offered by the Union Theological Seminary School of Sacred Music founded in 1928 by Clarence Dickinson, himself an esteemed, nationally recognized concert organist.  Westminster Choir College, founded a year later by John Finley Williamson, would also be an important training school for church organists.  Another key development for church music education was the decision in 1943 by the National Association of Schools of Music to begin certifying church music degrees and the curricula required to receive them.  Once certification was possible, a number of additional schools began offering sacred music degree programs.  This included Boston University, the University of Southern California, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and Southern Methodist University.  Also, during this same period, schools began offering church music degrees to women.  This had been out of the question when courses in sacred music were generally offered to the exclusively-male student bodies of seminary.

            By 1950, with the long shadow of World War II dissipating, church attendance and church membership rolls in the United States skyrocketed.  Hundreds of new churches were built to serve populations moving to the suburbs.  Older established churches had to expand facilities to meet the influx of new members.  This led to a surge in organ building. A golden age for church organist education got underway.  Sadly, it was not to last

            As we near the halfway point of 2023, there are positive signs amidst the gloom.  The organ building industry did have to change, however.  Large manufacturers, sometimes able to offer more modestly priced instruments, have become mostly a thing of the past:

            As noted earlier, writers during the boom years of the 1950s and 60s tended to single out the pipe organ as the sin qua non of worship.  The decline in recent years suggests that that was an incorrect assumption.  Churches continue to worship and find spiritual fulfillment, some utilizing pipe organs, others not.   Be assured, the pipe organ is not destined to disappear from church use.  Its presence will continue to be secure in larger and especially liturgically oriented churches as well as any religious community that is lifted up by its majesty and power.  In addition, I find hope in the fact that organists are becoming more flexible, building improvisational skills and harnessing the organ’s amazing ability to support music making in mixed instrumental/vocal ensembles.  What history teaches us, however, is that in a pluralistic society churches must be open to ministering to broadly diverse congregations.  Rigidly defining one style of music as the only appropriate one is dangerous and can have unintended consequences when congregants rebel and leave.  In the end, ministry must be the deciding factor.

Best wishes and Peace,

Stan McDaniel