CHAPTER 1 | PROTESTANT MUSIC OUTSIDE THE CALVINIST ORBIT 39
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH
The Church of England supported a musical life on
these shores very different from that of the Calvin-
ists. Anglican worship followed a prescribed church
calendar, and the content of many services was speci-
fi ed. The church was also hierarchical, with tiers of
offi cials from the Archbishop of Canterbury on down.
A church bureaucracy centered in London assigned
clergymen to specifi c churches in the New World.
(From 1786 on, American Anglicans called themselves
Episcopalians.)
Anglicans in the New World, welcoming visual and
musical display, recognized that organ music added
impressiveness to their worship. As Francis Hopkin-
son, a prominent Philadelphia Anglican and himself an
organist, put it: “I am one of those who take great delight
in sacred music, and think, w ith royal Dav id, that heart,
voice, and instrument should unite in adoration of the
great Supreme.” Indeed, much of the history of early
American church music centers on the organ: either the
Calvinists’ opposition to it or the fi nancial investment
needed to buy one. The high cost of importing an organ
from overseas was only part of the expense, however,
for churches with organs then had to fi nd organists to
play them. And that could mean hiring a professional
musician with European training.
Hopkinson warned church organists to remember “that the congregation
have not assembled to be entertained with [their] performance.” But not all
organists agreed, as shown by a 1781 description of an Anglican service in Phila-
delphia that reminded the disapproving observer of “a sort of opera, as well
for the music as the decorations.” Yet an organ could attract a skilled musician
to a community, whose musical life might then be enriched by that presence.
In 1737 St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina, hired as its organist
Charles Theodore Pachelbel, a native of Germany and son of Johann, composer
of the famous Canon in D. Pachelbel played at St. Philip’s until his death in 1750.
He also performed in public concerts, taught a singing school, and gave private
lessons.THE EPHRATA CLOISTER
Other Protestant groups also led unusually active musical lives. Two such groups
were Pennsylvania-based, German-speaking separatist societies that found
havens in America, where they pursued their visions of Christian living. The
fi rst formed a cloister in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Its founder, Conrad Beissel, was
a prolifi c writer who used hymns to present his theological ideas. By the mid-
1740s, Beissel, though untrained in music, had devised a system of composing
sacred choral music with a soft, otherworldly sound. Conceived for his cloisterK London organ builder
John Snetzler completed
this chamber organ in- It is now found
in the Congregational
Church in South Dennis,
Massachusetts.
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