Russell Collection of Early
Keyboard Instruments

St Cecilia's Hall, Niddry Street, Cowgate, Edinburgh EH1 1LJ

Organs and organists at the Foundling Hospital, 1750-1800

Donald Burrows

Thus, with an advertisement placed in the London newspapers during April 1750, the first organ for the Foundling Hospital chapel enters the documentary record. The composer's association with the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (to give the charity its full name) had begun a year before, when Handel had performed a mixed programme of his music in the Hospital's chapel. Although the Hospital had moved briskly with an ambitious building programme on its site in Lamb's Conduit Fields during the 1740s, the central chapel building overhead was still not completed when Handel gave his concert in 1749: at that stage it lacked not only internal furnishings but even windows. The concert was a money-raising event for the charity, and more specifically for the completion of the chapel itself, and in the following months Handel seems to have gone further and made an agreement with Jonathan Morse of Barnet for the provision of an organ for the chapel, which would have been its largest, and probably most expensive, item of furniture. For the history of the successive organs for the Hospital our best source of information is the surviving administrative records of the Hospital, subsequently maintained by the Hospital's legal successor, the Thomas Coram Foundation. In many ways these are a rich, and at times entertaining, source; but they are tantalising as well, because they only record the details that were of interest to the various committees that administered the Hospital. Thus, for example, we have no copy of the agreement between Handel and Morse, or indeed any copy of the agreements with the organ builders of the subsequent instruments over the next century.

The event for the opening of the organ in 1750 was Handel's first performance of  Messiah  in the Hospital chapel, and as such the occasion has some historical interest in itself. The course information in collaboration with Christopher Hogwood, is hoping to recreate these 1749 and 1750 performances in the anniversary years 1999-2000. The Hospital had originally planned to open the Chapel for public worship in May 1750 with a grand service adorned with a sermon from an eminent bishop and church music by Handel, but a month before the event it was suddenly realised that they had provided neither for the appointment of a regular clergyman or organist for the Chapel, nor for the resources to support such appointments. So the event turned instead into one marking the opening of the organ. The Messiah performance proved to be a success, but there were two serious embarrassments: twice as many people turned up as the building could hold, and the organ was not finished in time. The first problem was remedied by a second performance a fortnight later, and the minutes of the committee meeting at which this was arranged record as follows:

Mr Handel acquainting the committee that Dr Morse of Barnet had not finished the Organ for the Chapel of this Hospital, pursuant to the Contract he made with him in July last, for that purpose ordered that the Secretary do write to Dr Morse, to press his finishing the Organ for immediate use; and that he may find able Persons, to have as many stops therein, as he can, for Chorus's, before Tuesday the 15th instant. However, an eyewitness report of the second performance from Rev George William Harris suggests that nothing was achieved with the organ in time; went to the Foundling Hospital in the morning & heard the Messiah performed there in the Chapel. ...Handel out of Humour about the Organ.

Not surprisingly, the consequences rattle round the Hospital's committee minutes:

May 23 1750

Ordered

That the Secretary do write to Dr Morse, and acquaint him, the Committee are surprised that he should be so dilatory in performing his agreement with Mr Handel: and that as he has employed Persons who are found insufficient to complete the Organ, he must forthwith provide such Hands as are capable of finishing it. And to let him know that the Committee expect to see him here, next Wednesday according to the notice he has already had; and that if he continues trifling with them, as he has hitherto done, they will be obliged to take such measures as will be very disagreeable to him.

May 30 1750

Dr Morse attended the Committee, as directed by Letter, and being asked, by what time he could get the Organ in order, he would not fix upon any time, but promised to proceed upon it with all Expedition, and not to call off Mr Moffet from that work 'till it be completed. The said Mr Moffet attended at the same time, and promised, not to go to any other work 'till this be over.

A week later, the Sub-committee's attention turned to the organ case:

Resolved

That the proper members of the Cornices of the Organ case be carved.

Ordered

That Mr Keene do, as soon as possible, prepare a Draught accordingly, and take Mr Jacobsen's direction thereupon. The ornaments and pipes are to remain.

It's not clear whether the immediately following matter was the consequence of visual or musical considerations:

The Committee being informed that the Front pipes of the organ were too thin.

Ordered

That Mr Morse, who attended, do prepare a New set of Front Pipes; and that the Pipes now in Front be placed in the room of the wooden Diapason, which wooden stop Mr Morse is to have, and to be allowed a Sum, not exceeding Twenty Pounds, for his alteration.

On 6 February 1751 it was reported that Morse had delivered all the pipes belonging to the organ 'and the Committee agreed that he should be paid Twenty pounds for the Diapason stop agreed for by the Hospital'. I think that we can treat this date, some nine months after the announced opening of the organ, as the date at which it was actually completed. But perhaps not even then to the last detail, for in August 1751 we find a further payment to Moffatt, by Morse's order, of £6 for seven large trumpet pipes.

The minutes about the front pipes and the trumpet give us virtually our only hard information about the specification of the Handel organ at the Hospital. I'll return to the question of the case in a moment, but I'll just deal with the other three possible pieces of relevant evidence. The first is from the famous 1754 account for performers at the Foundling Hospital performance of Messiah.

The organ seems to have been large enough to require the services of two blowers. Considerably more wobbly as evidence is the object now to be found in the Coram display at Brunswick Square and bearing a label thus:

Keyboard of the actual Organ, presented to the Chapel of the Hospital by Handel: the gift of Robert Grey Esq Treasurer.

This has three manuals, with black naturals and white sharps, the lower two manuals having a compass with G-C (long octaves) in the bass and then four octaves and four notes up to E, the top manual having three octaves and four notes from C (presumably tenor C) to E. There is a rocker-coupler between the top two manuals, and a slider between the lower two. This keyboard was acquired and presented to the Hospital in 1898: where it came from and what relationship it had to anything that Handel touched seems to me to be anyone's guess, though due caution seems to be in order: It may have come from the later Parker organ. Yet more dubious is the specification of the 'anguished' organ given in an article in 'The Musical Times" by F. G. Edwards in 1902, derived from notes said to have been copied by Edward Hopkins from an earlier manuscript by William Russell. This perhaps represents the organ as it stood in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Handel organ lasted less than twenty years. Moffat was paid for tuning the organ in the early years and John Crang from 1757, but by 1766 the instrument was reported to be in bad condition. An estimate for repairs was called for, but no progress seems to have been made, for on 4 February 1768 it was once again reported that the organ in the Chapel is in very bad condition, and the Sub-Committee a month later, on 5 March, deliberated on whether to repair, sell or exchange their present instrument, or buy a new one. Mr Harrison, one of the Committee, was deputed to look into this, to obtain an estimate for the cost of repairs and for the cost of a new one allowing for the materials of the old one. A decision was made surprisingly promptly, because a subscription for a new organ was opened almost immediately, and on the 30th of that month we find this:

An agreement having been presented to this committee between Thomas Parker of Grays Inn Lane, Organ Builder, for building a new Organ in the Chapel for the sum of £430 with the several stops as are particularly mentioned in the said Agreement.

Resolved

That the Secretary do sign the said Agreement on the part of this Hospital; and that Mr Harrison be desired to see that Mr Parker do sign the Counterpart.

Soon after the conclusion of this agreement, something remarkable, and unrecorded, must have happened to the negotiations, for two months later it was superseded by another minute:

That instead of an organ agreed to be built for the use of the Chapel of this Hospital for £430, exclusive of the Organ now in the said Chapel, there shall be one made by Mr Thomas Parker, upon the new principle invented by the late Doctor Smith containing 4 additional notes in each Octave, at the price of £670 exclusive of the case, that the produce of the last Oratorio be applied towards payment thereof, and that the money arising from the Sale of the Musick Books be applied to the same use.

The rebuilding of the organ may have coincided with a general renovation of the Chapel's interior, for it was announced that from 21 August the building would be 'shut up ... in order to be repaired and beautified'. The contruction of the organ certainly continued into the next year, and we can trace some of its progress through the trickle of payments that went to the organ builder, in a series of references that reveals that Parker, like Morse, probably wasn't doing the essential work himself:

4 January 1769

Mr Harrison acquainted the Committee, that the Person who is building the Organ for the use of this Hospital, is in want of money to go on with making the said Organ, and the General Committee on the 1st of June last, having agreed that the produce of the last Oratorio should be applied toward the payment thereof being £109.17.6

Resolved

That the draft be made on the Bank ... for the above sum of £109.17.6. Then on 29 March 1769 Mr Harrison represented, that the person who is now building the Organ for the use of the Chapel of this Hospital is in want of more money to go on with the same, and the General Committee of the 1st of June last having agreed that the sum of £50 arising from the sale of the Musick Books should be applied to the same and another £50 draft was arranged. At the same meeting it was noted that as several of the Governors of this Hospital have not been acquainted that there is a subscription for building an Organ in the chapel of this Hospital.

Ordered

That the Steward is to carry the Subscription Roll to all the Governors  requesting that they will be pleased to subscribe to the same.

The organ eventually carried the inscription 'Erected by Subscription 1769, Thomas Parker Builder'. Another advance of £100 to Parker followed in January 1770, but perhaps after the completion of the organ. A performance of Messiah on 29 November 1769 was advertised as marking the opening of the organ: the forward announcement approved by the committee on 25 October began 'A fine Organ of a new Construction is nearly finished by Mr Parker of Grays Inn Lane for the Foundling Hospital being the most perfect Instrument of its kind in the Kingdom'.  If not entirely complete a month later, it was at least sufficiently up and running to be used. Among the performers scheduled to appear were Giardini the violinist, to lead the orchestra, Dupuis to accompany on the organ and Stanley to play a concerto on it, and Arnold to play the harpsichord: and all of these were duly thanked after the occasion for their services. A certain amount of post-production tweaking took place: in 1771.  Two more stops were added and Parker proposed to change the Open Diapason in the Choir Organ which was 'rather too soft or mute for the Chapel of this Hospital: this was agreed to, subject to inspection by Stanley after completion. More serious in a way was the re-arrangement in 1774 of the gallery in which the organ stood, part of a gradual process of expanding the seating capacity of the galleries that went on in stages over a considerable period. The General Court minute of 6 July 1774 on the subject expressed it as follows:

"Throwing the Organ back, and forming a nitch or cover for it to stand in, would render the Musical performance of much greater Advantage to this Corporation than in its present form, as well as make so much more room in the Chapel for the accommodation of the Congregation, which is now increasing very considerably."

The cost of setting-back of the organ was estimated at £350 and the work was duly completed in 1774, £170 going to John Frost for dealing with the organ itself. It's at this point that we should take note of the earliest surviving picture of the organ and the John Sanders engraving made in 1773 just before the gallery arrangement was altered.

It obviously shows the Parker organ in its original state. The question that arises is whether the Parker instrument was built in the case of the 'Handel' organ.  I'm disposed to think so, on the grounds that the architect of the Chapel, Theodore Jacobsen, had had some part in the design of the original case, and it was therefore in some sense part of the Chapel's architectural interior.  Whether Parker used any of the pipework or other materials from the earlier organ is a yet more intriguing question.  In spite of the statements in the minutes that Parker's work was independent of the previous instrument, I have found no references to suggest that the Hospital ever realised on the sale of materials from the old organ.

The Parker organ gave more enduring service than its predecessor, and at the next life-change it was renovated and extended rather than rebuilt. The substantial changes came at the instigation of William Russell, and the relevant documents from 1805-6 provide some hints about the nature of the Parker organ. Here are some extracts from Russell's original proposal of 6 March 1805:

"The Swell should be new - to consist of seven stops, viz Open Diapason, Stop Diapason, Principal, Trumpet, Cornet, Hautboy and Clarion. At present it has only the first four stops and is productive of little or no effect. The Flute stop (which is a very good one) should be moved from the Full Organ to the Choir  Organ and the Choir Organ soundboard enlarged so as to make room for it: in its present situation it is useless - it has never been played for many years.  There should be a Cornet stop added to the Full Organ -the Tierce should be made to draw separate - the Sesquialtera improved and a greater fullness of tone given to the Diapasons. There are in most church organs seven solo stops not one of which is in the Foundling organ, viz two Cornets, Hautboy, Clarion, Bassoon, French Horn and German Flute. ... And as the organ has the advantage of quarter notes the compass of the keys should be made compleat by adding the double g sharp and the double a flat all through the organ. The Cremona stop should also be made compleat - at present it is only a half stop.  The organ might be cleaned and the whole improvement added (without stopping one Sunday) for £120 ... The new Swell and all the other improvements except the double g sharp and double a flat might be done for 80 guineas but without these two large notes the organ will never be compleat."

The organ after these improvements was inspected by Thomas Attwood, who reported on 19 February 1806:

The chorus is greatly meliorated - the Diapasons have also a greater Body of Tone and the quality I think much improved. The judicious composition of the Sesquialtera and the Mixture [and the addition] of the G-G sharp and A-A flat produce an excellent effect. The Choir Organ is also much benefited - the Swell with the additional Notes and three new stops is of a superior quality: in short Sir - the new voicing of the Organ and raising it to Concert Pitch has in my opinion made it equal to any and superior to most instruments of London.

It's clear that Parker's pitch standard was regarded as being flat in 1806 - at a time when many early-18th century instruments were actually being lowered in pitch - but also that the alternative notes of Dr Smith's system survived this phase of alteration to the organ.

So much for the documentary record of the instruments. What about the organists and the music they played?  Here again the record is imperfect, though we do have a chain of appointment for the organists. In 1754 John Christopher Smith the younger was appointed as the Hospital's first organist, and the terms of his initiation are revealing: according to the minute, Handel, who had been consulted, approved of the committee's appointing Mr Smith Organist of the Chapel, to conduct his compositions'. This was of course just at the time when Handel's blindness made it impractical for him to continue the direction of the annual Messiah performances. The performance in November 1769 which marked the opening of the Parker organ was also the occasion of Smith's withdrawal: hitherto he had directed performances of Messiah, but the Hospital had invited Giardini to take over on this occasion and Smith indicated that in regard to the appointment of several Persons to be Performers by Mr Giardini as well as past transactions between them, it would by no means be agreeable for him to mix in the said performance: but that he is and always will be willing to do any thing in his power for the benefit of the charity by another performance of which he might have the sole direction.

In spite of these brave words, he resigned the Organist's post in May 1770. He was followed by Stephen Philpot, who in addition to being unmemorable was also short-lived: he died by January 1773 and was succeeded by Tom Grenville, a blind Foundling who had been a candidate in 1770 and had in the meantime held the post of Organist at Ross-on-Wye. Grenville retired in December 1797 and was succeeded by John Immyns, and a similar pattern to that of 1770 followed: Immyns had resigned by 1801 and he was followed by William Russell who had been a candidate three years before.

We do not know much about the routine musical life of the Chapel before 1800. I doubt that Smith regularly played for services; it is not clear whether musical services were performed except on special occasions, though there is mention of a deputy, Mr Scott, from the later 1750s.  Smith's main function was to provide performances of Messiah each year. The timing of Smith's departure was such that he never served on the Parker organ, so we don't even have to wonder what he thought of Dr Smith's system. From the 'Parker' years, and thus from the period during which Philpot and Grenville were organists, we have some sort of evidence of the music performed in chapel services, through the publication of the so-called 'Foundling Hospital Collection' entitled Psalms, Hymns and Anthems; sung in the Chapel of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children. The date of the first edition is uncertain, but the publication was certainly around by 1774, and it was probably the 'Music Books' referred to in 1768, whose sale helped to finance the Parker organ. I suspect that Giardini was in some way behind the project. Anyway, if we take the collection as it was published 10 years on, in 1778, it comprised 41 metrical psalms, 22 hymns and 27 anthems, which presumably constituted the current repertory. The anthems, mostly featuring one or two trebles with a concluding 'chorus', were by predictable composers such as Greene, Boyce, Kent, Nares and Stanley: perhaps they were sung by talented Foundling children from time to time, but I think that the regular singers were more likely a minimum number of adults. My guess is that the chapel services became more ambitious from the mid-1760s onwards, and that it was in the 1770s that anthems became a regular feature.  It is only around the 1800 that we begin to get more tangible evidence for repertory and performers, in the first surviving manuscript part-books, including organ books, from the Chapel.

Finally we might briefly contemplate what the role of the organ might have been in the Messiah performances. I have already gone into print with the speculation that Handel himself at first directed the Foundling Hospital performances from the harpsichord, leaving Smith to play the organ: following Handel's blindness, Smith took over the harpsichord, leaving Handel to play the odd concerto from memory when he felt well enough, or sometimes to busk along on the organ during the performances . The relative roles of organ and harpsichord in Handel's theatre performances are fairly well established: the harpsichiord was the principal continuo instrument, while the organ accompanied the choruses and supplied a tasto solo bass line to some arias.  It would have just been possible to accompany the oratorio with organ continuo alone for the Foundling Hospital performances, since Messiah has so little recitative, but what is practically possible may not have been aesthetically appropriate: there's no serious evidence for the use of the organ as the main continuo instrument to accompany arias in Handel's oratorio performances, except as a specified special effect.  There is a specific practical point, which Parker's organ seem to confirm, that the conventional limitation of the organ's role during the Handel/Smith years avoided the problems of intonation, consequent on the organs fixed temperament (whatever it was) in the accompanied recitatives and arias.  As we have seen, the 1769 Messiah performance definitely included both organ and harpsichord: how the instruments were used in the 'Giardini/Stanley' period of performances between 1769 and 1777 was can only guess. What we can be certain of is that neither Handel nor Smith ever accompanied any part of Messiah, or rendered the solo part in an organ concerto, on an instrument that gave them a choice in the black notes.

THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL ORGANS

- Donald Burrows August 1998

Home Page | List of Papers | Contents