ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the history of English organ music. It considers what prescripts and protocols composers, organ builders, and liturgical practitioners adhered to and how historical precedent and contemporary practice influenced their respective contributions. As the role of music and specifically the organ as an instrument in society has developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, so too have composers built on the work of the leading practitioners of the nineteenth century with an invigorated sense of creativity. With new concert halls, advanced instrument design and several generations of composers with divergent religious backgrounds, the historical context of organists writing the larger share of repertoire has more recently been taken forward with compositional approaches that are sometimes ambitiously removed from immediate ecclesiastical influence.
