(b Wheatley, nr Oxford, 1740; d Isleworth, Middx, 14 Sept 1796). English organ builder. The son of an Oxford distiller, he was apprenticed in 1754 to George Pyke (c17251777), a London clockmaker and organ builder. In 1768 he entered into partnership with John Byfield (iii). In 1772 he married Sarah, daughter of the clockmaker Eardley Norton, became a freeman of the Clockmakers' Company, and set up his own business in Red Lion Street, Holborn, London. He subsequently worked from addresses in Islington before moving in 1789 to larger premises in Isleworth. After his death the business was carried on by his widow and his foreman, Benjamin Blyth. Green enjoyed the patronage of George III after Snetzler's retirement in 1781. Important extant organs, of which the case and substantial quantities of pipework survive, include those for St Katharine-beside-the-Tower, London (1778, removed to new buildings in Regent's Park in 1825); St Thomas's, Ardwick, Manchester (1788, removed to St Paul's, Salford, in 1977); Royal Naval Hospital Chapel, Greenwich (1789); Salisbury Cathedral (1792, removed to St Thomas's, Salisbury, in 1876); St Mary's, Chatham (1795, now in Cologne, and the subject of a restoration project); and Trinity College Chapel, Dublin (1797, most of which was removed to Durrow Church, Co. Laois, Ireland, in 1842). Several chamber organs are extant including one, dating from 1786, that remains unaltered in a private residence in Hereford & Worcester. Significant remains of mechanism, as well as casework and pipework, survive from the Lichfield Cathedral organ (1790, removed to St John the Baptist's, Armitage, in 1861) and also in the substantial house organ at Heaton Hall, Manchester (1790). Green applied an inventive genius to the mechanism of the organ, experimenting with and developing, for instance, swell box control and aids to registration. He had the reputation of being a good reed voicer. He cultivated a sophisticated style of flue pipe voicing, achieving a characteristic delicacy by restricting the wind flow at the pipe foot. Admiration for Green's style of voicing persisted well into the 19th century, but it eventually suffered severe criticism, beginning perhaps with Sutton: He certainly carried his system of voicing the pipes to the highest degree of delicacy; but what he gained in that way he lost in the general effect of the instrument though the quality of tone is sweet, at the same time, it is very thin, and his Chorus is entirely destitute of either fulness or brilliancy of tone. Green also came in for criticism concerning the introduction of gothic casework. It can be shown, however, that most, if not all, of Green's gothic cases were applied to organs that were built under the supervision of advisers. Left to himself he seems to have preferred the traditional Renaissance style of case.
J. Sutton: A Short Account of Organs Built in England from the Reign of King Charles the Second to the Present Time (London, 1847/R), 7985, 989
E.J. Hopkins and E.F. Rimbault: The Organ: its History and Construction (London, 1855, 3/1887/R), 15053, 156, 276
A. Freeman: Samuel Green, The Organ, xxiii (19434), 11017, 15362; xxiv (19445), 1725, 5563
W.L. Sumner: The Organ: its Evolution, Principles of Construction and Use (London, 1952, enlarged 4/1973/R), 1727
D.C. Wickens: The Instruments of Samuel Green (Basingstoke and Metuchen, NJ, 1987)
D.C. Wickens: The Position of Samuel Green in Eighteenth-Century English Organ-Building, Organ Yearbook, xxi (1990), 5166
S. Bicknell: The History of the English Organ (Cambridge, 1996)
DAVID C. WICKENS