High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In music a voluntary is a piece of music, usually for organ, which is played as part of a church service. The music that an organist plays before and after a service is always called a voluntary.The word voluntary can be used for the title of a piece of music. The title was often used by English composers in the late Renaissance or Baroque periods for a piece of organ music that was free in style, i.e. it did not have to be composed in a strict form such as sonata form or a fugue. It was meant to sound as if it was being improvised (the word voluntary in general means free , i.e. not forced to do something ).