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54 The National Music of America.
to be offered to King's Chapel,1 the representative of the Church of England in Boston at that time. The vote of the Puritan church was overwhelmingly against the innovation, and the sentence, " We do not think it proper to use the same in the public worship of God," is terse and to the point. The organ was therefore given to King's Chapel, which used it until 1756, when a new and larger one was bought. An organist was imported from London to play upon the instrument. This was the first pipe-organ set up in a New England church, and its coming caused about as much commotion as the entrance of the wooden horse into Troy; Cotton Mather, who believed in congregational singing, and had helped the
1 The edifice still stands at the corner of School and Tremoht Streets, and the old organ is also still in existence; the instrument was sold, in 1756, to St. Paul's Church, Newburyport, which, in 1836, sold it to St. John's Church in Portsmouth, where it is said to be in reasonably good condition even now. |
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