ABSTRACT
The worship of the Church of England was served by three broad categories of organ between 1500 and 1800. The documentary evidence of organs in cathedrals, colleges and parish churches records their installation, repair or removal, but scarcely ever anything of their use. The use of the organ as a solo instrument within the liturgy reached its zenith in England and Wales during the first half of the sixteenth century. The introduction of the violin band to the Chapel Royal at the behest of Charles II in 1662, and the stronger rhythmic and periodic idiom of the compositions marked a radical change in the sound of music in church. Regional evidence on the main source of start-up capital indicates the universal popularity of personal savings as a means of beginning a firm. Cutting across the chronology of organ styles is the chronology of religious and political change.
