Over seventy-five poems inspired by the organ have been assembled by Rollin Smith into this beautiful volume. Highlights include “The Organist in Heaven“ by T.E. Brown, “Abt Vogler“ by Robert Browning, “But Let My Due Feet Never Fail“ by John Milton, “The Organ Blower“ by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and so many more. An excellent gift for yourself and your friends.
For over four decades Peter Williams has been an influential and stimulating figure in the study of early keyboard instruments and their music. Such publications as The European Organ (1966), The Organ Yearbook (since 1969), and The Organ Music of J.S. Bach (1984) marked him as an indispensable voice in organ scholarship. This collection of essays pays tribute to Professor Williams's contributions with important, fascinating articles by many of the worldís top scholars in the field, including Gregory Butler, Lynn Edwards Butler, Thomas Donahue, Dominic Gwynn, David Ledbetter, Kimberly Marshall, Raymond Monelle, Mary Oleskiewicz, Ibo Ortgies, Barbara Owen, Larry Palmer, Edward Pepe, David Schulenberg, Alexander Silbiger, Richard Troeger, and David Yearsley. Topics covered range from the music of J. S. Bach and his sons, to early keyboard temperaments, the earliest unfretted clavichords, and women at the organ.
Spain's El Escorial, home to royalty and also the site of a monastery, college, library and an enormous church, was designed and built by royal architects at the 1557 commission of King Philip II. It is the tomb of many Spanish kings and remains as a monument to the richness of 16th-century Spain. The enormous church built in the complex contained, at one time, as many as nine organs. Two of these long gone instruments, built by the Fleming Gilles Brebos, are documented in a surviving manuscript, which contains details about their specifications, appearance and use. This book is a facsimile and translation of the manuscript, as well as an analysis of its importance and contents.
The 2006 Organ Atlas, issued in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary convention celebration of the O.H.S. broke new ground in the documentation of the American Organ culture. For the first time, an O.H.S. convention publication goes beyond simply documenting the convention instruments themselves and delves into the organ culture of the surrounding region. As an added bonus, the regional culture and the non-organ venues are put into historical perspective. The book is profusely illustrated with historical maps and rare archival photography. Also a first, is the photo gallery depicting stunning full-page color portraits of each instrument featured during the convention. Rich technical and historical documentation that represents much new and previously unpublished research, completes the volume. The 2006 Organ Atlas is receiving critical acclaim from around the globe.
Celebrating the founding of The Organ Historical Society fifty years ago (our 50th year begins in the Summer of 2006), the OHS Press publishes an eclectic collection of essays in honor of Barbara Owen who is one of the Society’s founders who has served twice as its President. This hardbound book of 409 pages and 68 illustrations includes original writings in English by fifteen scholars of the organ. Click the headline for authors and titles of the essays, further description, and to order.
Murray M. Harris returned in 1894 from his Boston apprenticeship with organbuilder George S. Hutchings to a booming Los Angeles where only eight pipe organs existed. Six years later, Los Angeles would have 154 churches in it and scores of new pipe organs, many of them built by Harris and Henry C. Fletcher became business partners and founded the city’s first organbuilding firm, Fletcher & Harris. From this beginning more than 100 organs were built by 1913, including the world’s largest for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and that would become Philadelphia’s famous Wanamaker Organ. David Lennox Smith (d. 1979) carefully gathered the history of Harris and his contemporaries and Orpha Ochse has updated Smith’s research with the help of colleagues Jack Bethards, Kevin Gilchrist, Jim Lewis, and Manuel Rosales to include an annotated opus list, listings of organbuilders from the Los Angeles City Directories, many stoplists and photographs, and technical details. 344 pages, hardbound
American organist and composer Eugene Thayer (1838-1889) inaugurated in 1874 a quarterly newspaper designed specifically and exclusively for organists – the first such publication in America and thus the forerunner to such periodicals as The Diapason, The American Organist, and The Tracker. Each issue contains commentary, reports and stoplists of specific organs in the U. S. and abroad, historical accounts of organ culture, articles by Thayer and others, and 62 compositions for the organ by Thayer (28 pieces), Liszt, Rossini, Chadwick, Merkel, Guilmant, Lemmens, Hesse, Battmann, and many others. In 1877, Thayer published all of the issues as a set containing 242 pages, and a facsimile of that is what the Organ Historical Society has published anew, as a hardbound book with a very informative biographical and musicological, annotated, introduction by OHS member Allison Alcorn-Oppedahl as well as a list of Thayer’s musical compositions, publications, and places of employment and education.
