“A King before all other instruments.”

–Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, 1619

 “One of the most wondrous wind machines ever invented.”

–Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, 1636

“The most noble of all the instruments of sound.”

–Johann Mattheson, Vollkommener Capellmeister, 1740

Even the most loyal subjects of the King of Instruments must admit that he was long ago toppled from the throne he had occupied for centuries.

In the United Kingdom, 400 instruments are being junked each year, warns the group Pipe Up for Pipe Organs in its report “Silencing the King” issued in March of this year. Britain had 400 organs in 1800, mostly of modest size. By 1915 there were some 40,000. Pipe Up predicts that unless the trend is reversed or at least stalled, there will be none left by 2070 except in the British cathedrals and Oxford and Cambridge chapels—less places of devotion than tourist destinations. These numbers reveal much about the rise and fall of a once great nation and the decline of empire, and about de-industrialization and secularization.

Go to the National Pipe Organ Registry and find the “at risk” tab and you will see magnificent organs pictured along with a recently added note, “church has been sold.”

Growing up in Buckinghamshire on the edge of Greater London as the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, Anna Lapwood must have learned from a young age of the rampant insurgency against the King. Lapwood came to the “instrument of instruments” (as Michael Praetorius also called the organ) by learning many other instruments first. She can play fifteen, four at a high level. She was harpist for the National Youth Orchestra.

The harp and organ have long been figured as heavenly, played by angels. Lapwood’s enthusiasm and energy give off the visionary glow of a celestial being. This aura is amplified, or perhaps simply exploited, in the cover photographs of many of her recordings, most incandescently in her 2025 album Firedove, on which she is staged—in contrast to her usual TikTok and interview attire of black jeans and jacket and scholarly eyeglasses—in a glittering gold gown with plunging neckline, nimbus of solar fusion-powered wings behind her, her blond locks agleam. Her career, too, is on fire.

Like many of her concerts and albums, Firedove is a mix of music originally for the organ interleaved with fare foraged from pop culture. The organ works range from the dreamily evocative to the bracingly virtuosic, interleaved with her transcriptions of blockbuster movie soundtracks and songs by the likes of Bob Dylan and Robbie Williams. Her film music tastes gravitate to those of Christopher Nolan (Inception and Interstellar), scored by Hans Zimmer. Since Nemo thundered away on his organ in the Nautilus beneath the sea, the organ has been a sonic symbol of science fiction (as in Zimmer’s organ-centric Interstellar score). Lapwood turns that darkness to resplendent dawn. Her earthly talent is imbued with the ethereal.

With more than 4 million followers across her various social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, she is hands and feet down the most famous organist on the globe, even as her music and message push off-world.

The numbers are already stratospheric. In June of last year, she offered a free concert in the Cologne Cathedral. 10,000 people showed up, more than twice what the vast Gothic church could hold. Lapwood generously played (the somewhat truncated) program twice so that more of the masses could experience her magic. Lapwood’s upcoming UK tour kicks off in the Newcastle Arena, a venue with room for 11,000.

The rocket of her fame is fueled by social media and circumstance. Rehearsing for a concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall in the spring of 2022, she was overheard by the electronic musician Bonobo and his band, who had a sold-out concert the next day. Captivated by her space-age music, they asked her to join them for the climax of their show. The result of that close encounter got more than five million views on Lapwood’s TikTok account. The rest is history still in the making. Lapwood was just named as the first-ever official organist of the Albert Hall.

In an interview aired on PBS News Hour in June, she explained why she chose the organ over the other instruments: “I feel the most free, natural version of myself. I feel so much more free than I do in normal life, to be perfectly honest. It is the freest version of myself on stage, because it’s the music, which is just like a glove in my mind. It is just me.”

In this organist, the prophetic and the personal commingle. Her enthusiasm seems driven by a sense of joyful mission and self-discovery.

The chimerical immediacy of TikTok brings her virtual fans up-close to the organ console, a place often completely hidden—or far from—her live audiences. Lapwood is the supreme purveyor of intimate access to the King.

There is a real person behind the persona constructed by the likes of SONY and pumped up by her social media machine. That is the paradox: that TikTok reveals the human touch even as it feeds the deafening noise of monetized celebrity.

Aside from her virtual numbers, Lapwood’s accomplishments are real. As an eighteen-year-old, she won a prestigious organ scholarship at Magdalen College at Oxford University, the first woman to be awarded the post in the more than five-century history of the institution. An advocate for women in the culture of British church music dominated since time immemorial by men, she served as Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge for nearly a decade. There she founded a girls’ choir and hosted Bach-a-thon organ concerts played exclusively by women. Last year she gave up the Pembroke post to dedicate herself more fully to her solo career.

For those organists—the Musical Patriot included—often lucky to gather an audience that reaches a number with more than two digits, her globalized deeds attain the epic. It is a path for a performer far braver than I, daunted less by the size of the crowds than by the sanity-testing strain of relentless self-surveillance and self-sharing.

The pressure to curate and commodify appears inexorable.

A few days after Queen Elizabeth died in September of 2022, Lapwood made her way to one of those historic British organs salvaged by Pipe Up from a disused church and set up in busy London Bridge Station. A singing security guard joined her spontaneously for a rendition of a mournful Handel aria in a touching display of genuine music-making between a busy professional and an on-the-job amateur. Lapwood recorded her informal duet using her constant iPhone companion, then posted the video the same day. It went viral—another booster for the brand. Somewhere in digital heaven, an angel gets its wings with every new view.