For anyone and any library seriously collecting works on the organ, above all on organ design and organ‐building, this encyclopedia will be a must‐have. Realistically in a field where many other music reference works cover organs and organ music as part of much else, this encyclopedia concentrates very much on organ building and organ builders. This is underpinned by thorough discussion of organ functions – divisions, voicing, tuning, winding, registration – and by historical discussion, in Europe and North America mainly, of developments in design and operation.
Black‐and‐white illustrations of well over 50 classic organs are provided, along with diagrams explaining the “science” such as tracker action and the Barker lever. Numerous organ specifications are provided – of the typical Cavaillé‐Coll French organ, and of the organ in the Royal Palace Chapel in Madrid (under the entry Spain). Organists and organ theorists are included where they had a critical role to play in the history, design, and concept of the organ, but wider coverage of well‐known organ composers (anyone from Buxtehude to Reger and Vierne, for instance) is not included (something for purchasers to note). Also not included is anything systematic about church liturgy or the role of the organ in oratorios and similar musical work. These are not shortcomings, since they reflect the tight remit set by the editors and contributors.
Bush is professor of music at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and Kassell is a composer and editor based in New York (readers may recognize his contribution to the other volumes in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments series on the piano and harpsichord). Among the contributors are Kimberley Marshall of Arizona State University, Stephen Pinel of the Organ Historical Society, and Edward Stauff of the Institute for Pipe Organ Research and Education. Many of the entries draw on professional knowledge and expertise, and on the web sites of extant organ‐building companies. Many of these companies have gone through many incarnations, and stretch back into history, and for this reason a full account is given, where possible, of where their organs are located.
The focus of the encyclopedia is organ design and organ‐building. This is the intellectual core of the work, with substantial entries on Cavaillé‐Coll and Charles Barker, Silbermann and Beckerath, Rieger and Arp Schnitger, Willis and Phelps (associated with Casavant of Canada). Such entries often provide as much commercial as musical information, of interest to the musical historian and sociologist. Influences are noted and often the position of an organ builder in the historic tradition is explained (as with the entry on Charles Fisk). Some, like Audsley, were more designers than builders. More than a few were engineers, physicists, and acoustics experts as well.
Around this central thread of organ‐builders is woven a comprehensive fabric of information about organ functions. Entries like Division (the sections of the organ pipes) are succinct and well cross‐referenced (for example to “grand choeur” and “Unterwerk”), while entries like Tuning and Temperament and Pitch and Pitch Standards are models of their kind, setting them in historical context and explaining the science. Both the organist and the organ historian will expect to see, and will be pleased to see, sure‐footed entries on great and swell, flue and bellows, diapason and bourdon, drawstop and free reed, stoplist and over‐blowing, unda maris and Rückpositiv and much else. Concepts like Anches, the reed ensemble in each division of a typical French organ, are understandable linked to entries like Cavaillé‐Coll (typically of the organ at Ste. Clotilde in Paris, dating from 1859)
Scope is another criterion for such an encyclopedia, and readers may expect to find entries on player pipe organs, theatre and electronic organs. The entry on Player Pipe Organs is highly informative, historically and technically, and entries on the other two, including the expected reference to “the mighty Wurlitzer”, as well as the incorporation of Baroque and other voicings in the electronic version, and links between electronic organs and changing musical fashions like jazz, are equally interesting. The concept, design, and building of the organ are connected with two other major themes in the encyclopedia – history and performance.
Bush and Kassel have rightly been eclectic (in the best sense) in their selection of historical entries. There are numerous “country” entries, like Spain and Russia and Poland, but what strikes the reader is the shift of mind‐set from a conventional geographical approach to something more customized to the reader interested in the evolution of the organ and organ design. As a result, entries on Austria, England and the USA follow a logical historical order (respectively, Gothic and Renaissance through Baroque to Romantic and beyond, nineteenth‐century modernism to neoclassicism and restoration, and the shift from gigantism to authentic performance). More obvious still are entries on the Low Countries and Bavaria, East Prussia and Saxony, all historically important for organ music and organ building, and showing how this field is one of interest as much to museologists as to musicians (the entry on Restoration proves this).
Of equal importance – to the historiography of organ design and organ building – are the entries on organ theorists (many were also composers and players). Their work helped to shape organ design and construction, as well as performance and interpretation. Here we can pick out Francois Bédos de Celles, whose L'Art du Facteur d'Orgues, 1766‐78 influenced organ‐building for over 100 years, Gerhardus Havingha, whose Origin and Progress of Organs, 1727, shaped above all the organs at Alkmaar, Andreas Werckmeister, whose work on organ temperament and inspection (dating from 1681 and afterwards) went through numerous editions, and Joachim Hess, whose advice on playing the organ and the harpsichord appeared through the years 1772‐1810. Bush and Kassel are right to include them in their encyclopedia, leaving readers to connect up organ builders and concepts of organ design and musical enactment for themselves. Setting history and performance in perspective are wider entries on the Baroque organ, the mechanical organ, the medieval and Renaissance organ, and the Romantic organ. It follows from this that entries on performance practice, historic fingerings, mechanical aids (some bizarre!), and E Power Biggs are also of interest. Given that, why not also Gillian Weir, Helmut Walcha, Flor Peeters and Simon Preston?
Tying in with all these strands is information about organizations (like the American Guild of Organists, the Cinema Organ Society, and other groups around the world) and the literature about organ history, design, and building. A formal entry on Periodicals is a sound starting‐point for international study. Many entries have a bibliography, and a systematic examination of bibliographies will provide a collection check for key works in the library. An index will help readers move across entries which, in themselves, have numerous capitalized cross‐references. Bibliographies also refer to articles and dissertations, likely to be of interest to the serious researcher.
So, summing up, a well‐focused reference work, alert to what other classic works like Groves offer in the field and striking out on its own, building logically on a substantial reference canon (dictionaries of the organ, organ stops, and the like) in its own right but offering the modern library a well‐presented and critically sound work for today. If you collect in this area, get it.
