ABSTRACT
The provision of organs in north-eastern churches at the beginning of the 18th century was erratic – rare outside the large towns and not omnipresent within them. One of the consequences of the situation in which an organist's post represented only one of a number of income sources for a professional musician was an occasional neglect of the organist's duties. The role of the organist in church music was twofold: to provide voluntaries and to accompany psalm-singing. Charles Avison was less sanguine; he expressed considerable reservations about the performance of the psalms, in particular with reference to the organ accompaniments, the speed of singing, the use of too many parts, and the over-ornamentation of the tunes. He certainly did not, however, have access to a choir, at least during John Brown's tenure as vicar; the singing of psalms was very definitely in Brown's view, a matter for the entire congregation.
