From the Spanish mission days of the seventeenth century to the present, the history of the organ in the United States mirrors to a remarkable degree its social, economic, and cultural setting. It has unique characteristics that bind it more closely than any other instrument to its location, to social and economic changes, and to fluctuations in musical taste. Trends in immigration, wars, economic crises, the growth of factories, the availability of electricity, the popularity of orchestral music, and the invention of the phonograph and of the player piano all had a part in determining the course of American organ history. The author provides descriptions and specifications of instruments representative of the various periods of organ building: from the small tracker-action organs built by the colonists to the electropneumatic monsters of the early twentieth century to today's repertoire-oriented instruments. She shows how the design of the organ has been affected by its intended use--in the church, the home, or the concert hall--and by the music written for it--whether it be voluntaries for the church service, the much-deplored orchestral transcriptions, or the polyphony of the Baroque era, in which there is now a renewed interest. Among many vignettes of social history, the author presents the story of a group of Moravian settlers who transported an organ by riverboat and wagon to their new home in the wilderness, the conduct of a lawsuit in Charleston, S.C., in 1840 that paved the way for the admission of the organ into Reform synagogues, and the tale of a resourceful minister who raised money for an organ by selling shares in a Nevada silver mine. This complete and well-written history of the organ in the United States fills a long-felt need for a comprehensive account of the instrument's development and the output of major builders, along with analyses of stylistic trends. Illustrated and accompanied by a three-part appendix and an extensive bibliography, the book will interest not only organists and builders but also those concerned generally with the fields of music history and Americana.
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