Under the Greenwood Tree is Thomas Hardy’s gentle early novel, subtitled “The Mellstock Quire,” set in a Wessex village and centred on the small church band whose members play for services and celebrations. The story follows the quire’s resistance to being replaced by a new organ, alongside a tender courtship.
Though a work of fiction rather than musical history, the novel earns its place here through its loving portrait of traditional village church music and the men who made it. Hardy’s affectionate “rural painting” preserves a vanishing world of communal music-making. Charming and warm-hearted, the book is both a classic of English literature and an evocative record of country musical life.