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The Episcopal church has a rich tradition of music in worship that is rooted in the Church of England, was adapted to life in colonial America, and has evolved to that which we experience today. Anglican colonists were often surprisingly quick-considering other issues of survival that must have taken precedence-to establish churches, form vestries, and hire priests. Once those tasks were finished, they turned their attention to details of worship such as hiring organists and installing instruments. The performance practice of music in worship was dictated by church rubrics, the patterns established in England, and colonial resources.
THE ORGANISTS' RESPONSIBILITIES
Like their English counterparts, colonial parishes had two services on Sundays and holy days: Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. Existing documentation indicates that colonial organists followed the English parish tradition of services which included organ music. King's Chapel, Boston is believed to have been the first American Anglican church to install an organ.1 Their agreement with Edward Enstone, the English organist hired by the parish's agent in 1714, stated that he was expected to "at all proper and usuall times of Divine service Officiate as Organist in the said Chappell,"2 implying a tradition of" using the organ for both regular and special services.
The vestry of St. Philip's, Charleston, in the vestry minutes of its 6 March 1758 meeting, outlined the role of the organ in their parish:
The duty required of an Organist here is to play the Organ on all Sundays at Morning and Evening Service & on all Church Holy Days at morning Service and two mornings in the yr at the opening of the assembly, and at no other times, except at great funerals at the desire of the relations of the deceased.3
These responsibilities remained constant in pre-revolutionary Charleston. The following is an excerpt of Peter Valton's first contract with the parish in 1764:
This Agreement Indented, made and Concluded in London the Twenty-first day of August, in the year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven hundred Sixty four, Between Richard Grubb and William Greenwood of London...acting for and in the Behalf of...the present Vestry of Church Wardens of the Parish of St. Philip in Charles Town, in the province of South Carolina...and Peter Valton, of the parish of...