I have added some new references  to secular organs from the C17 to the list. Several of these relate to instruments that were observed by foreign visitors to the domestic spaces of the late Tudor and Jacobean royal palaces. Some of these organs are rather interesting, and included features such as clockwork player mechanisms, automata, and multiple keyboards. I am currently looking further into all this and hope to publish some findings later in the year.

I have also added a list of the extant consort organ materials, listing instruments and the various fragments that survive. It’s very much an ongoing work, but may hopefully be of interest.

I continue to resist including organs in domestic chapels in the references list. Some of these were undoubtedly consort organs, but certainly not all of them were, and they thus fall outside the strict remit of this site. There is an increasing number of them coming to light though, and I may compile a seperate resource listing them anon. I have been researching the provision of small organs in cathedral and collegiate churches in the C17, of which there were many more than the published histories of the church organ acknowledge. Many of these were part of a multi-organ provision, which again is a facet that has been largely unrecognised. The ways these organs related to the larger church organs and to contemporary consort organs is interesting, and I hope that my findings on all this will be published later in the year (once the peer reviewers have done their worst).

Another area that will be coming to the website is consideration of the use of the consort organ in vocal music. This was an important role for the secular organ, but space precluded discussing it in my initial research. The subsequent work on this topic forms the subject of the fourth chapter of my forthcoming book, and ought therefore to be represented here too.

And finally, thank you to all the correspondents who have been getting in touch from around the world about the consort organ and its use. I welcome enquiries and will do my best to answer them.