This page last revised 17 March 2000

Christopher Smart's poem 'On the Goodness of the Supreme Being' (1756) includes the following lines:

      - for hark the organs blow
Their swelling notes round the cathedral's dome,
And grace th'harmonious choir, celestial feast
To pious ears, and med'cine of the mind;
The thrilling trebles and the manly base
Join in accordance meet, and with one voice
All to the sacred subject suit their song.
While in each breast sweet melancholy reigns
Angelically pensive, till the joy
Improves and purifies; - the solemn scene
The Sun through storied panes surveys with awe,
And bashfully with-holds each bolder beam.

In part one of 'Anton Reiser' (1785), Karl Philipp Moritz describes young Anton's fascination with the church organ.

Thus the church was filled with people before divine service began. A solemn silence prevailed. Suddenly the full-toned organ rang out, and the hymn of praise bursting from the lips of such a multitude seemed to shake the very vault...
. . .
The choir in the church, where the organ was and the choristers sang, always seemed to [Anton] something inaccessible; he often cast yearning glances at it, and wished for no greater happiness than just once to have a close look at the wondrous construction of the organ and the other things there, which now he could only marvel at from a distance...

The following is from 'The Monk' (1796) by Matthew Lewis:

He still fancied himself to be in the Church of the Capuchins; but it was no longer dark and solitary. Multitudes of silver Lamps shed splendour from the vaulted Roof; Accompanied by the captivating chaunt of distant choristers; the Organ's melody swelled through the Church; The Altar seemed decorated as for some distinguished feast; It was surrounded by a brilliant Company; and near it stood Antonia arrayed in bridal white, and blushing with all the charms of Virgin Modesty.
. . .
The Chapel-windows were illuminated. As they stood on the outside, the Auditors heard the full swell of the organ, accompanied by a chorus of female voices, rise upon the stillness of the night.

The following is from 'The Manuscript found in Saragossa' (c.1810), by the Polish author Jan Potocki. A character describes Portuguese convents:

Everything in these houses of retreat tends to intoxicate the heart and the senses. The very air which one breathes is balmy. There are rows upon rows of flowers in front of the images of the saints. A glimpse beyond the parlour reveals solitary dormitories, decorated and perfumed in the same way. The sound of the profane guitar mingling with the chords of the sacred organ drowns the sweet whisperings of young lovers glued to each side of the grille. Such is the way of life in Portuguese convents.

And in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'The Children of the Lord's Supper' (c.1840):

Loud rang the bells already; the thronging crowd was assembled
Far from valleys and hills, to list to the holy preaching.
Hark! then roll forth at once the mighty tones from the organ,
Hover like voices from God, aloft like invisible spirits.

And from Thomas Carlyle's 'The English Mail-Coach' (1849):

Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but muttered at intervals - gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense - threw up, as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music.

In 'Ode to Rae Wilson' Thomas Hood wrote:

Each cloud-capped mountain is a holy altar;
An organ breathes in every grove;
And the full heart's a Psalter,
Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love.

The following comes from Flaubert's account of his travels in Egypt (Carnets de Voyage, December 24th 1849):

Midnight Mass (Latin). Bishop under a canopy, candles, columns decorated with red damask. Above, women's gallery in palmwood curving out like a belly (as though it couldn't help doing so, impelled by the feminine principle) - the veils of a few women could be glimpsed through it. While the priests were donning their chasubles, the organ played lilting tunes.

Emily Dickinson's perspective (c.1860) on the ecclesiastical organ is typically individual:

I've heard an Organ talk, sometimes
In a Cathedral Aisle,
And understood no word it said -
Yet held my breath, the while -

And risen up - and gone away,
A more Bernardine Girl -
Yet - know not what was done to me
In that old Chapel Aisle.

The organ merits a passing mention in a humorous passage in 'Father Gaucher's Elixir', from Alphonse Daudet's 'Letters from my Windmill' (1866):

One evening, during the service, [Father Gaucher] came into the church in a state of extraordinary agitation... At first everybody thought he was upset at arriving late; but when he was seen to genuflect reverently several times to the organ and to the galleries instead of before the high altar, tear through the church like a tornado... a murmur of astonishment swept through the church.

Chapter 29 of Charles Dickens's 'The Pickwick Papers' (1837) is entitled 'The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton'. It is set "In an old abbey town, down in this part of the country, a long, long while ago." Here is the organ, sounding as an accompaniment to the goblins' nocturnal revels:

As the goblin laughed, the sexton observed, for one instant, a brilliant illumination within the windows of the church, as if the whole building were lighted up; it disappeared, the organ pealed forth a lively air, and whole troops of goblins, the very counterpart of the first one, poured into the churchyard, and began playing at leap-frog with the tombstones: never stopping for an instant to take breath, but `overing' the highest among them, one after the other, with the most marvellous dexterity... At last the game reached to a most exciting pitch; the organ played quicker and quicker; and the goblins leaped faster and faster: coiling themselves up, rolling head over heels upon the ground, and bounding over the tombstones like foot-balls.

Harriet Ward Beecher wrote, in Musical Opinion on January 1st, 1878:

The organ, long expected, has arrived, been unpacked, set up, and glared over. The great players of the region round about, or of distant celebrity, have had the grand organ exhibition; and this magnificent instrument has been put through its paces in a manner which has surprised everyone, and, if it had a conscious existence, must have surprised the organ itself most of all. It has piped, fluted, trumpeted, brayed, thundered; it has played so loud that everybody was deafened, and so soft that nobody could hear. The pedals played for thunder, and the flutes languished and coquetted, and the swell died away in delicious suffocation, like one singing a sweet song under the bedclothes.

Sometimes ecclesiastical reverence is degraded, as in the following passage about the old bell-ringer Carhaix from J.K. Huysman's 'La Bas' (1891):

He was like a creature reverted, a relic of a bygone age, and he was supremely contemptuous of the miserable fin de siècle church showmen who, to draw fashionable audiences, did not fear to offer the attraction of cavatinas and waltzes rendered on the cathedral organs by manufacturers of profane music, by ballet mongers and comic opera-wrights.

In England the organ itself was sometimes seen as an interloper in the church, displacing the traditional band of musicians. Thomas Hardy's short story 'A Few Crusted Characters' (1891) includes the following:

'I had quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass viols,' said the home-comer, musingly. 'Are they still going on the same as of old?'
'Bless the man!' said Christopher Twink, the master-thatcher; 'why, they've been done away with these twenty year. A young teetotaller plays the organ in church now, and plays it very well; though 'tis not quite such good music as in old times, because the organ is one of them that go with a winch, and the young teetotaller says he can't always throw the proper feeling into the tune without wellnigh working his arms off.'
'Why did they make the change, then?'
'Well, partly because of fashion, partly because the old musicians got into a sort of scrape...'

The band, it appears, got drunk and horrified the congregation by playing secular dance tunes in church:

'The pa'son might have forgi'ed 'em when he learned the truth o't, but the squire would not. That very week he sent for a barrel-organ that would play two-and-twenty new psalm-tunes, so exact and particular that, however sinful inclined you was, you could play nothing but psalm-tunes whatsomever. He had a really respectable man to turn the winch, as I said, and the old players played no more.'

The same concerns are explored at greater length in Thomas Hardy's novel 'Under the Greenwood Tree' (1872). In his introduction to the novel Hardy wrote:

One is inclined to regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of control and accomplishment which were, no doubt, secured by installing the single artist, the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the interest of the parishoners in church doings.

Hardy's novel is set in Mellstock, 'a parish of considerable acreage'. Early in the story one of the members of the band reflects:

'Times have changed from the times they used to be... People don't care much about us now! I've been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the old string-players? Barrel-organs, and the things next door to 'em that you blow with your foot, have come in terribly of late years.'

His sentiments are echoed by his friends:

'And harmonions,' William continued in a louder voice... 'harmonions and barrel-organs' ('Ah!' and groans from Spinks) 'be miserable - what shall I call 'em? - miserable -'
'Sinners,' suggested Jimmy...
'Miserable dumbledores!'
'Right, William, and so they be - miserable dumbledores!' said the choir with unanimity.

Nonetheless, the new vicar has brought with him a cabinet-organ, and the band and choir are duly ousted. A young lady plays the interloper instrument:

The organ stood on one side of the chancel, close to and under the immediate eye of the vicar when he was in the pulpit and also in full view of the congregation.

So they stood and watched the curls of her hair trailing down the back of the successful rival, and the waving of her feather as she swayed her head. After a few timid notes and uncertain touches her playing became markedly correct, and towards the end full and free. But, whether from prejudice or unbiased judgement, the venerable body of musicians could not help thinking that the simpler notes they had been wont to bring forth were more in keeping with the simplicity of their old church than the crowded chords and interludes it was her pleasure to produce.

The romantic intrigue surrounding the young lady organist, a band-member and the vicar is worked out at length in Hardy's novel.

Elsewhere in Hardy's works the organ is use for dramatic effect, such as the following extract from 'Far From the Madding Crowd' (1874). Bathsheba has been contemplating inscriptions on tombstones in the churchyard:

Whilst she stood and read and meditated the tones of the organ began again in the church, and she went with the same light step round to the porch and listened. The door was closed, and the choir was learning a new hymn. Bathsheba was stirred by emotions which latterly she had assumed to be altogether dead within her.

And from George Eliot's 'The Mill on the Floss' (1860):

'Ah! I know what you mean about music—I feel so,' said Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. 'At least,' she added, in a saddened tone, 'I used to feel so when I had any music: I never have any now, except the organ at church.'

Finally, here is an extract from Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' (1891):

I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I pass’d the church;
Winds of autumn!—as I walk’d the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretch’d sighs, up above, so mournful;
I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera—I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
...Heart of my love!—you too I heard, murmuring low, through one of the wrists around my head;
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear.

The next part deals with the organ as a church instrument in literature from 1900 to the present day.