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Library
Associates Newsletter
Spring 2001- NEWSLETTER 59 |
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Georgetown's
English Organ Not long after he began the process of creating Georgetown, John Carroll went to England to be ordained as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States. The site for the ordination, which took place on August 15, 1790, was Lulworth Castle, the Dorset estate of Thomas Weld, who acted as Carroll's English agent for attracting donations to the nascent college on the Potomac. Weld had just finished building on his estate a chapel dedicated to St. Mary, the first free-standing Catholic church for public worship to be built since the Reformation. Worship (and we suppose the ordination of Bishop Carroll) was accompanied by a fine pipe organ built by Richard Seede of Bristol about 1785 and installed in the Lulworth chapel shortly thereafter. A single-manual instrument of 12 stops (but with two of those enclosed in a swell box), the instrument was entirely suitable for the English organ music of its time created by composers such as John Bennett, William Boyce, Maurice Greene, and John Stanley. Recently restored, the organ
has been used in creating a newly-released CD of music of the time played
by John Wellingham. A copy of the CD is available in Lauinger Library,
and additional copies are available from the producer, John Brennan, at
Plenum Records, 130 Southfield Road, Oxford OX4 1PA, England. |