Page 43 - BBC Music (January 2020)

‘‘ The 16th- next significant upheaval: the English Civil War.

As Cromwellian puritanical zeal swept through
century English
the country, organs were once again under
Reformation saw pressure (although the hypocrisy of Cromwell
installing an organ in the Great Hall at Hampton
the destruction Court, for his own enjoyment and edification, is
telling). Distressing and reckless though these
or terminal times were, they did herald a new style of music
– and a new style of organ to match.
decline of many Organ builders such as Robert Dallam, who

English organs had been working in exile in northern France,
’’ institutions. The new organs built by Dallam
returned to construct organs for English

and his contemporaries were fitted with extra
gallic sounds: colourful trumpets, cremonas,
vox humanas, cornets, and mixture stops to
extend the harmonic series upwards. An extra
manual (creating the new ‘double organ’) began
to be more commonplace, and grew to be part of
the soundworld of Blow, Purcell and Locke:

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 45