ABSTRACT
A good deal of twentieth-century musical research about George Frideric Handel's great contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach has been occupied with the search for the "Bach organ." The main part of the organ (the "great" division), as originally built for Charles Jennens, is attributed to Thomas Parker, according to a pencil note left in the organ by Michael Woodward of Birmingham. The organ he used for his oratorio performances at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden—donated to the theater at his death—perished in a building fire in 1808. Its specification was the same as what he recommended in the letter to Charles Jennens, though it had a trumpet stop rather than a flute. Handel did the same on a lesser scale, and his letter to Charles Jennens gives a picture of Handel the consultant, recommending the specification of an organ to an avid devotee of his music.
