This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The organs of Westminster Abbey and their music, 1240-1908 Knight, D. S The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 10. Oct. 2021 The Organs of Westminster Abbey and their Music, 1240-1908 David Stanley Knight PhD, Historical Musicology King's College, University of London 2001 (LcL) Abstract This dissertation considers the history of the organs in Westminster Abbey and the music performed on them from the eleventh century to the start of the twentieth. It is primarily based on the documentary evidence in Westminster Abbey Library and Muniment Room and transcriptions of material from here form a large part of the appendices. The thesis considers the organs built especially for the Abbey and temporary instruments used for coronations and other events. The organ builders represented include John Howe, Thomas Dallam, John Burwood, Bernard Smith, Christopher Shrider, Thomas Elliot and William Hill. The organists of Westminster Abbey include the composers Edmund Hooper, Orlando Gibbons, John Blow, Henry Purcell, William Croft, Benjamin Cooke and James Turle. Compositions they wrote while in post are used as sources of information about the organ, and are related to the details of the instrument found in documentary and secondary sources. The compositions are used to evaluate these details when appropriate. A new edition of Benjamin Cooke's organ voluntaries and his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in G form part of the dissertation. The voluntaries appear together here for the first time in a modern edition. The choral repertoire is discussed with reference to part books used in the Abbey from the Restoration until the beginning of the twentieth century and to a catalogue of printed music in the choir library compiled around 1905. The role of the organ in the liturgical life of the Abbey is considered, and the political events which affected this are introduced and discussed. Coronation services take place in the Abbey. The music performed at these from Charles II to Victoria is established as far as possible from service books in Lambeth Palace Library and other sources. The musical forces available at coronations are discussed, including organs built in the Abbey especially for these events. 2 Table of Contents Volume 1 Abstract 2 Library Sigla 4 1 Introduction 6 2 The Organs before the Commonwealth 9 3 The Restoration Organ 1660-1727 38 4 The Shrider Organ 1727-183 1 60 5 Organs Used for Coronation Services 1661-1838, Special Events at the 102 Abbey and the Music Performed 6 The Hill Era 1828 - 1908 136 7 Conclusions 178 Bibliography 184 Appendix 1: Table of Contents 197 Benjamin Cooke, Organ Voluntaries, Lcm MS 810 198 Benjamin Cooke, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in G, Lcm MS 827 242 Volume 2 Introduction to Appendices 2-5 281 Table of Contents 282 Appendix 2 Transcriptions from Primary Sources: Westminster Abbey Library and Muniment Room 2.1 Chapter Act Books 293 2.2 Fabric Vouchers Box 311 2.3 General Vouchers Box 313 2.4 Lease Books 314 2.5 Recent Chapter Office Boxes (RCO Boxes) 323 2.5 Westminster Abbey Muniments (WAMS) 352 Appendix 3 Transcriptions from Primary Sources: Other Libraries 3.1 British Organ Archive, Birmingham Central Library 459 3.2 Lambeth Palace Library 476 Appendix 4 Specifications 480 Appendix 5 Triforium Music and Choral Repertoire 486 Photographic Plates 496 Tables 3.1 Compasses and Registrations derived from Organ Music by Westminster 56 Abbey Organists 1660-1723 4.1 Specifications and Compass, the Shrider Organ: Benjamin Cooke, 87 Published Music 4.2 Specifications and Compass, the Shrider Organ: Benjamin Cooke's Music 90 in the Royal College of Music Manuscripts 4.3 Georg Muffat Apparatus musico-organisticus copied in Lcm MS 820 95 4.4 Triforium Music: Westminster Abbey Library 96 3 Library Sigla Library Sigla follow the system used in Grove 6 Great Britain AB National Library of Wales Bu Birmingham University Cu! Cambridge, University Library DRc Durham Cathedral DRu Durham University EL Ely Cathedral Library Lb! London, British Library Lcm London, Royal College of Music L!p London, Lambeth Palace Lpro London, Public Record Office Lwa London, Westminster Abbey Ob Oxford, Bodleian Library T Tenbury, St. Michael's College Och Oxford, Christ Church Ojc Oxford, St. John's College WRch St. George's Windsor Other Abbreviations GHMS London, Guildhall Library Manuscript WAMS Westminster Abbey Muniment, all in Lwa References to documents transcribed in the appendices are followed by their page numbers in the appendix, proceeded by the volume of the dissertation where this is found in Roman numerals. The symbols" ' in a transcription indicate material inserted above the line in the original. Pitch Notation For notation of pitch the following scheme is used: 7: O •0- CC C c ci c2 c3 c4 4 Part 1 Text 1 Introduction English organ history is almost exclusively based on a study of the instruments themselves, with only incidental reference to their use in the liturgy and the repertory played on them. Organ historians tend to follow the major events in organ-building history, using appropriate examples from around the country to make their various points. This dissertation takes a different course. It looks at the history of the organs in one location, Westminster Abbey, from the eleventh century to the start of the twentieth. There is a great deal of documentary evidence surviving in Westminster Abbey Library and Muniment Room, which is used as the basis of the study and is transcribed in Appendix 2. This includes references, in varying degrees of detail, to organs built especially for the Abbey and to temporary instruments used for coronations and other events. The organ builders represented include John Howe, Thomas Dallam, John Burwood, Bernard Smith, Christopher Shrider, Thomas [Elliot and William Hill. The written record about the organs is not sufficient to provide all the detail we would like to have about them and their musical use. It is necessary, therefore, to look more widely for evidence. The organists of Westminster Abbey include the composers Edmund Hooper, Orlando Gibbons, John Blow, Henry Purcell, William Croft, Benjamin Cooke, and James Turle. Their activity as composers throws some light on the evolution of the Abbey organs in that the music often implies the resources required for its performance. Their compositions written while they were in post at the Abbey will therefore be used as sources of information about the organ. The dissertation includes references to part books used in the Abbey from the Restoration until the beginning of the twentieth century, and to a catalogue of printed music in the choir library made around 1905. Using these and other documents the repertoire of the choir will be considered. The role of the organ in the liturgical life of the Abbey is one area where the links between the church and the state are put into sharp relief, and the 6 political events which affected this are introduced and discussed. In particular, the Abbey church has been used for coronations and other state occasions such as the installation of the Knights of the Bath and the Handel commemorations. These events all involved organ building, providing alternative instruments for a specific purpose or removing an organ from the Abbey to make space for the ceremony. They are all closely connected with the state and show a close relationship between ceremonial state occasions and the provision of organ music. There have been two previous publications about the Abbey organ, both now out of print; Douglas Guest's A Short History of the Organs of WestminsterAbbey, London (1970) has only 20 pages. Jocelyn Perkins's The Organs and Bells of Westminster Abbey (1937) is a far more thorough book and follows the history up to the 1936 organ. Neither of these histories puts the organ into a wider musical context, nor do they discuss organs used in the Abbey for other occasions. The 1923 article by Andrew Freeman in The Organ, 'Westminster Abbey Organs', is the other significant contribution to the written history of this instrument. Appendix 1 is an edition of Benjamin Cooke's voluntaries from Lcm MS 810 that appear together for the first time in modern notation, along with a full score of his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from his Service in G major. These scores are used to discuss the organ during Cooke's time as organist of Westminster Abbey, and introduce new material to the discussion of this instrument.