ABSTRACT
The key to understand the use of music in the parochial worship of post-Reformation England might quite understandably be thought to lie in the religious writings of the period: in works of theology and polemic. Organ music was clearly an important element in the public worship of the parishioners of Wing. The ambivalence of the Reformed Church of England towards the role of music in religious worship was not, in fact, new. It was shared by the leading figures of continental Reformed Protestantism, but it had also been exhibited by the Church Fathers, and was plain for all to see in scripture itself. The continental Reformers adopted a range of attitudes towards the use of music in public worship, with theological positions ranging from the almost totally permissive to the utterly prohibitive. Zwingli's intense distrust of liturgism led to a wholesale ban on traditional practices of choral and organ music in the public religious worship of Zurich.
