and settings that found a permanent place in the repertory of the best choirs, came to an end with the rise of Puritanism. The Puritans were themselves divided over an issue which, four centuries later, remains a bone of contention among Anglicans: is music intended to assist the church to offer to God in worship the highest and best of which it is capable or should it be designed to help the individual members of congregations to lift up their hearts in acts of corporate praise and thanksgiving that are both edifying and challenging?
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when Calvinism was dominant, the second of these emphases eventually prevailed. The organs in the parish churches were dismantled and where there were choirs these were disbanded. Instead, the services were spoken, except for the Psalms, which, in a metrical version, were often sung, unaccompanied, to simple tunes adapted from folk and theatre songs – a method copied from the continental reformers. In some places the canticles were given similar treatment, all sung slowly. The overall style of worship could hardly have been more different from that which is expressed in parish churches today. There were exceptions however, not least in Westminster where, at the Chapel Royal and the Abbey, the organist Orlando Gibbons composed some of the finest ever service settings and anthems. But during the Commonwealth the cathedral choirs and organs also disappeared and the worship, when offered, was austere in the extreme.
The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 brought little change initially to the musical content of the worship but gradually significant developments took place in town churches. Organs were recovered or replaced and attracted some gifted organists who also composed new church music. Choirs came back and included children who were carefully rehearsed. Henry Purcell, arguably the greatest of English composers, became organist of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal in 1680 and composed service settings and anthems which broke new ground in church music and thereafter became high points in the offering of worship everywhere. He died when he was only 36 and the epitaph on his gravestone in Westminster Abbey reads, ‘Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq., who left this life and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded.’ Another composer who achieved greatness at this time, despite his Puritan background, was John Blow.
In country churches, too, there were signs of new musical life. Voluntary choirs, usually of young men, were formed to improve the quality of the psalm singing. Some of these aspired to sing other music – canticles and anthems by Purcell and later, Bach, Handel and Pergolesi, and this offered scope for the introduction of musical instruments. By the end of the eighteenth century many village churches had bands consisting of bassoons, flutes, serpents and various stringed instruments. The quality of these varied considerably and it must not be supposed that this century featured a feast of glorious church music enhancing inspiring worship. On the contrary, as the century advanced, the quality of both went into serious decline. The clergy and educated laity lost interest in church music, while the embracing of Latitudinarianism and new scientific thinking led to a devaluing of the mysterious, supernatural element in religion in favour of a more rational, moralistic approach. All of which, allied to scandalous misuse of endowments and neglect of some of the basics of church life, resulted in acts of worship, in both parish churches and cathedrals, that were formal, dreary and cold. The services, recited by the priest and the parish clerk, left little opportunity for congregational participation, except perhaps for the singing of metrical psalms.
In some places, however, the High Church tradition, associated with the reforms initiated by Archbishop Laud in the early part of the previous century, survived and retained dignified liturgical worship. From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, and as a reaction against the Church of England’s neglectfulness, Methodism also provided a warmer alternative, albeit outside the walls of parish churches. And by the end of the century an evangelical revival within the Church of England was beginning to change its worship for the better in some places, not least by the introduction of hymns. The replacement of the bands by organs or harmoniums proved, however, to be highly controversial in most villages, and in his preface to Under the Greenwood Tree, based on such a controversy, Thomas Hardy alleged that a direct result of this change had been ‘to curtail and extinguish the interest of parishioners in such doings’.
Whether or not this be true, it is indisputable that by 1830, on the eve of the great reform movement that was to galvanize and change virtually every aspect of life in Victorian England, the worship offered in most parish churches and cathedrals remained at a shockingly low ebb.
3. The Last of the Old Wine – John Goss
When John Goss became organist of St Paul’s in 1838 he found the music of the great cathedral, as well as almost every other aspect of its life, appalling. This could hardly have surprised him, since he had been involved in the capital’s musical life from an early age. What is more, only a slight acquaintance with other English cathedrals would have made him aware that the situation at St Paul’s was commonplace. There it was more deplorable than most, however, inasmuch as it had huge resources of money and manpower that a corrupt capitular regime had directed from the furtherance of the cathedral’s worship and witness to the pockets of a number of privileged clergymen.
Goss found a community that consisted of a dean, three residentiary canons, 30 prebendaries, 12 minor canons, six vicars choral, eight singing boys and a large complement of vergers and other minor functionaries. The deans of St Paul’s, who received a stipend of £5,000 per annum, had for many years also been diocesan bishops. The residential canons, who had £2,000 per annum, also held one or more other appointments in the church, while the 30 prebendaries, all appointed by the Bishop of London from among his relations and friends, received an income of varying amounts from the land allocated to their stalls; these also held one or more other appointments.
The minor canons, who were responsible for the ordering and conducting of worship on Sundays and weekdays, formed a college with its own legal identity, and its own endowments. They, too, held other appointments, usually livings in the City of London, and whenever vacancies occurred in the college, they recruited the replacements, nearly always from clergymen who were professional musicians. The vicars choral were laymen and professional musicians who also sang at Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal. One of their number was the organist, who employed a permanent deputy to sing in his place, another was the master of the choristers. All the appointments at St Paul’s were to freehold offices, tenable until death, and as at other cathedrals they continued to be held even when their occupants were incapable of performing their duties.
What should have been an impressive great church was, moreover, fatally flawed by persistent absenteeism. The dean put in an appearance only infrequently, he being preoccupied with his bishopric. The canons residentiary were required by the statutes to occupy houses in Amen Court for four months of the year and during this time to attend the daily services. Since they were answerable only to their apparently untutored consciences, they were often absent. One of their number, who held with his canonry the sinecure office of precentor, appeared so infrequently that on one occasion when he did turn up for a service the dean’s verger failed to recognize him and refused him admission to his stall. Sydney Smith, a fellow canon, referred to him as ‘the Absenter’. The minor canons were not much better than their superiors. In theory they should have been present and involved in the daily services, augmenting the choir, but they were frequently absent and there was rarely anyone in authority to hold them to account. They were a law unto themselves.
Morning Prayer was said on weekdays at 7 a.m. (8 a.m. in the winter), sung at 9.45 a.m., and Evening Prayer was sung at 3.15 p.m. The same pattern was observed on Sundays, except that Holy Communion was celebrated after 9.45 a.m. Morning Prayer, as it was also on saints’ days falling in the week. The east end of the building, which housed the choir stalls, was separated from the nave by the huge organ screen, and the mostly unrehearsed performance of the eight singing boys and as many of the vicars choral and minor canons as chose to turn up was poor – very much worse than that achieved in the best of the nearby City churches. The choice of anthems was determined, and generally limited, by the number of vicars choral likely to be available and sometimes had to
