MAA 1:5 Six Voluntarys for the Organ or Harpsichord (c. 1770) by Samuel Felsted (1743-1802)

Scholarship on Samuel Felsted (1743-1802) has focused almost exclusively on his work Jonah an Oratorio (1775), the first surviving example of this genre of composition known to have been written in the British North American colonies. Alongside this seminal work of British diasporic musical history however, another set of pieces by the composer has received much less attention. These works are arguably just as important, being the first set of organ pieces published by a composer native to the New World.

A few earlier and contemporary organ pieces survive by European-born immigrants to the British North American colonies, including James Bremner (d. 1780), and possibly Anthony Collins (d. 1742) and Thomas Schley (1712-1790). However, these works were never published, and their circulation remained localized within their composer’s area of residence, and orbit of teaching and other professional activities. The Six Voluntarys for the Organ or Harpsichord by Samuel Felsted, though somewhat conservative in terms of compositional technique, display the composer’s attainment in writing for the keyboard, as well as his knowledge and mastery of the tradition of organ composition in Great Britain as it flourished during the reign of George III.