Eighteenth-Century Anglican Worship: Music in the Parish Church

Part 3. Music in the Parish Church

By contrast to the cathedrals, where a full choral establishment of organist, lay-clerks, and choristers was the norm, the musical resources of parishes churches were much more various. Some small and remote parishes simply had a clerk who would line out the metrical psalms that punctuated 1700s Anglican worship, but after about 1710, the reform of psalmody which had been initiated by Tate and Brady’s “New Version” of the Psalms in meter initiated a period of modest reform. Many parishes formed a mixed choir accompanied by a small band of string, wind, and brass instruments, whilst town parishes increasingly acquired organs as the century progressed.

English Organs of the 1700s were by later standards small and lacked pedal boards. Two manuals and 10 to 12 stops seem to have been standard with the essentials being a good diapason chorus, a trumpet, and a flute. A large 1735 instrument survives at Christchurch, Spitalfields, London, with some 35 stops and a later pedal board, but the somewhat small instrument, formerly in Lichfield Cathedral, that survives in Armitage Parish Church, Staffs, is more typical of the period. A few other eighteenth-century instruments survive, usually in out-of-the-way places, but most perished in the late 1800s with the widespread introduction of the “orchestral” tone organs beloved of the Victorians. The organ was used for a voluntary before and after the service, and after the 2nd lesson at Mattins. It was also used to accompany the metrical psalms playing a prelude and interludes between the verses, as well as the accompanying verses themselves. However, only about one in ten churches had an organ in the eighteenth century.

Service music in this period was also extremely limited. The occasional anthem, one of the canticles, most commonly either the Venite or the Jubilate, and the responses to the Decalogue. Parson Woodforde is known to have objected to this latter custom and to have asked the singers to desist from singing them when first at Weston. The dominant version of the Psalter was Sternhold and Hopkins at the beginning of the 18th century, quickly giving way to Tate and Brady, or “The New Version” as the century progressed. As the New Version was metrically more diverse than the Old, the early eighteenth century produced many new tunes. “Hannover,” and “St Anne,” were introduced, and this momentum continued through the century with tunes such as Truro, and Lydia (Phillips) appearing in the 1780s and 1790s.

In a town church, Sunday morning service would have begun with an organ voluntary as an immediate warning that worship was to begin. The parson and clerk would have taken their place on the middle and lower deck of the pulpit respectively, and the service would have started, with a psalm, or with the opening sentence of Mattins. The degree to which the congregation joined in with the responses in the fixed parts of the service varied enormously. Some churches would have endured the duet of parson and clerk, whilst, in others, the congregation would have made the responses to the Litany and Commandments. As the tyranny of nineteenth-century clericalism had not yet deprived the clerk of his proper role, he would have read the lessons, including the Epistle in the ante-communion service. Apart from the items mentioned earlier, the service would have been read. Metrical Psalms were usually sung immediately before the service, after the Litany, before and after the sermon. Due to the size of the congregations, these were sung slowly, though not as slowly as Lutheran Chorales were in this period. In many places the practice of lining out obtained until literacy and books became common towards the end of the century.

Holy Communion was something of a liturgical Cinderella in this period. The long attempt by the Puritans to drag Anglican worship fully into the Calvinist mainstream had failed in 1660, but certain attitudes carried over into the post-Revolutionary Church. Communion was regarded more as a sign of church membership and good standing than the effectual means of grace it was proclaimed to be by the Articles of Religion. As a result, celebrations tended to be held 3 to 6 times a year in rural parishes – Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide celebrations were all put universal, with many parishes adding celebrations before and after Harvest at Lammas and Michaelmas, respectively. In most towns, monthly communion was common, but in others, communion seasons – a leftover from the 1600s – at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun would have obtained with celebrations of Holy Communion taking place on all three days of those feasts. No matter where one went, most of the congregation would flee at the end of either the sermon or the Prayer for the Church Militant, whilst the communicants would retreat into the chancel for the celebration, as most churches were still used as two rooms. This was another manifestation of Reformed influence in that, ordinarily, only communicants were to be present for the celebration. The priest would stand at the north end in surplice and hood, and the clerk at the south of the Holy Table. The elements would be leavened bread and undiluted wine which had been placed on the Table either before the service, or after the sermon. These would be covered with a linen veil which would be removed for the consecration, then replaced after Communion. The service would have been spoken throughout.

Evening Prayer would have been much the same as Morning Prayer except that in conservative parishes Catechesis would have taken place after the second lesson, and there would have been no sermon. Use of the Catechism as part of the evening service seems to have declined steadily during the eighteenth century. Baptisms also occurred after the second lesson at either service. There is evidence that on occasion the Magnificat or the Nunc Dimittis, but never both, would have been sung in the more musically ambitious parishes.

Eighteenth-century Anglican worship was fully liturgical, and yet thoroughly word-orientated. It would be a mistake, though, to see the sacraments as being neglected. Baptism was both a religious initiation conveying conditionally the gift of Regeneration, and a social rite by which the child was fully incorporated into a society which was profoundly Christian. Eighteenth-century attitudes to communion focussed heavily on the need to avoid unworthy reception, so, although communion was infrequent, there was serious preparation for it, and most Anglicans of this period would have regarded Christ as being present in the celebration, and spiritually received through the outward signs of bread and the wine. Sadly, by comparison with the late-nineteenth century Church buildings were sometimes very neglected, and the presence of a large number of half-committed worshippers often made the services a little less reverent than one would desire. However, the validity of the eighteenth-century form of service is confirmed by the fact that when Victorian notions of correctness began to impinge on parish churches, the laity often took themselves off to the Methodist chapels where something of the old atmosphere remained.

[Divine Service in English Parish Church in the 18th century]