ABSTRACT
This essay explores the music that was popularly performed in English parish churches during the ‘West Gallery period’, roughly the later eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. It outlines the emergence and characteristics of the music in terms of repertory, instrumentation and performance style. The groups of performers, who often mixed voices and portable instruments, were sometimes described as church bands or more recently choir-bands. The musicians tended to be artisan tradesmen, although this was not always the case. Some people were vocal in their opposition to this music, seeing it as unworthy of inclusion in services. The nature and sources of these critical voices are investigated as is the decline of the music in the nineteenth century. Although marginalised by mainstream writers of music history, interest in this popular church music started soon after its decline and the essay considers antiquarian and scholarly writing on the subject down to the present day, looking at its strengths and weaknesses. There were pockets of survival of the music, and since the 1970s, a revival in its performance, which are considered and scrutinised. We now have fuller, more interesting, if sometimes contested ideas about popular church music in the west gallery period.
