Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 162
Scan 162
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
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13. Early Organ Building
3a. Beginnings
5The first real impetus to instrumental music in America came through the introduction of organs into the churches. How reluctantly this was done is shown by the fact that the organ willed in 1713 by Thomas Brattle to Brattle Square Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was declined. The construction of an organ seems to have been so little understood then that the church refused "a pair of organs" in declining this instrument. Provision was made in case of refusal for the organ to go to King's Chapel on the same terms, namely—it was "given and devoted to the praise and glory of God in said church if they shall accept thereof and within a year after my decease procure a sober person that can play skilfully thereon with a loud noise."¹ By tradition the organ sat in the porch of King's Chapel for seven months before it was unpacked.
7This instrument, set up in 1714, has long been considered the first pipe organ used in a church in the Colonies. It was probably the first pipe organ in New England and the second in the Colonies, since Mr. Lahee in his Annals of Music in America states that the first pipe organ to reach America from Europe was placed in the Episcopal Church at Port Royal, Virginia, in 1700.² Apparently it was difficult to find a good sober organist here as Edward Enstone was persuaded to come from England soon after 1714 to be the Brattle organ's second organist. In 1756 it was sold to St. Paul's Church, Newburyport, Massachusetts, where it was used until it was resold for $450 to St. John's Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.³ Until sometime after 1903 the organ was in the Chapel in active use. It is still playable.
9When William B. Goodwin repaired the Brattle organ he made the following notes of the probable original specifications of this instrument, built as a parlor organ and used as such in William Brattle's home at least as early as 1711. The one manual had a DD to e³ compass. The only proved original stops were Stopped
11¹ Lahee, Henry C. "Organs and Organ Building in New England." New England Magazine, December 1897 p. 487.
12² Lahee, Henry C. Annals of Music in America p. 3.
13³ Goodrich, Henry A. Church Organs: Some of the Early Builders of New England p. 5.
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