BIOS Reporter – Volume 32, No.4 – October 2008

Over the past few months a number of organ-related newspaper articles, spanning over 200 years, have come across my desk. Newspapers are a rich source of information about organs, and recent Research Notes have shown how much can be gleaned on organs, builders and organists from London papers. From 1700 onwards, newspapers flourished in Britain, both in the capital and in many provincial towns and cities. As organs came to be installed in parish churches during the course of the eighteenth century, inaugural concerts or services would often be reported. One is unlikely to come across a very detailed description of an organ but articles can contain pieces of information – such as the name of a builder or the organist – that may be unavailable anywhere else. Advertisements can also yield precious nuggets. For example, I recently bought a book of eighteenth-century printed music that included an undated collection of songs composed by Daniel Bearden, ‘Organist of ST MARY, STRATFORD, BOW’. This collection is not listed in RISM and Bearden does not appear in Dawes’ index of organists of the City of London. There was, however, an advertisement in the General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer (Monday 22 June 1778) announcing the publication of the collection on the following Monday, thus firmly dating its appearance. Hardly a great discovery, but nonetheless a satisfying pebble added to our growing cairn of knowledge of the world of organs and organists in eighteenth-century London…