Rollin Smith book

“Won’t you be my neighbor?”

Do you associate a tune with that sentence? The cardigan sweater, the sneakers, the catchy melody, and the slightly off-pitch singing are all icons for the children of baby boomers—those who grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I picture a quiet suburban cul-de-sac with ranch houses, station wagons parked on concrete driveways, bicycles on their sides in the tree lawns, kids being sent next door to borrow a cup of sugar, and maybe a spinet piano covered with framed photos. Fred Rogers did his best to teach our children and us how to be good friends and neighbors over the airways of Public Television.
There’s an eight-rank Aeolian residence organ in my workshop right now, Opus 1014, built in 1906 for the home of John Munro Longyear in Brookline, Massachusetts. Mr. Longyear discovered huge mineral deposits in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, acquired vast tracts of land, and made a fortune bringing the ore to market. He and his wife Mary were devoted students of Christian Science, and they moved to Boston in 1901 where Mary Longyear became a close friend of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Following their deaths, their home was left to a foundation in their name that developed the building and grounds into a museum about Christian Science.1 After the museum closed in 1998, the estate was purchased by a developer who built a community of condominium residences on the site. The Organ Clearing House acquired the organ in the summer of 2005, helping the developers create space for a fitness center.
This is a terrific organ, complete with a 116-note roll-player, the famed automatic device that plays the organ using paper rolls. Spending a few months with an organ like this gives one great insight into the standards of a legendary company. In the last years of the nineteenth century, Aeolian began building a list of clients that reads like Who’s Who of the history of American corporations. Aeolian didn’t get such a good name by accident—their organs are beautifully made and uniquely conceived as the last word in personal luxury of their day. The idea that a pipe organ like this would be considered a must-have furnishing in a grand house has captivated me, and with the help of a smashing book I’ve formed a picture of a neighborhood that would knock Mr. Rogers’ socks off.
Rollin Smith’s The Aeolian Pipe Organ and Its Music was published by the Organ Historical Society in 1998 and is available through their catalogue. Go to and buy a copy or two. I took quite a bit of grief at home when my wife realized that the book I was chuckling over was about residence pipe organs, but when I read her a couple passages my point was made. Mr. Smith understands that the heritage of the Aeolian Company is something very special, and he has told us all about it. The book contains plenty of facts about the company’s history. The stories about the early twentieth-century organists who played on, composed for, and recorded on the Aeolian Organ form a fascinating picture of the styles and opinions of early twentieth-century virtuosi—many of whose names are familiar to us today. The importance of the Aeolian Organ as documentation of a school of playing is unequaled—remember that the phonograph was primitive in those days—and the Aeolian rolls are among the earliest accurate recordings of such masters as Marcel Dupré, Clarence Eddy, and Lynwood Farnam. An example of the accuracy of this musical documentation is found on page 227, where Mr. Smith provides a comparison of the first eight measures of the score of the Daquin Noël with a reprint to scale of the same passage as recorded on the Aeolian roll by Dupré. By looking at the length of the notes on the roll, an organist familiar with piece can see clearly that Dupré clipped the first note of the piece short and accented the second (fourth beat of the measure), that he added a low D in the left hand on the fourth beat of the fourth measure (not in the score!), and that he started his trills on the lower note. What a lot of historical information to get from a few dots on a page.
Mr. Smith emphasizes the importance of this documentation by quoting a statement made by Charles-Marie Widor in 1899:

How interesting it would be if it were possible for us to consult a phonograph from the time of Molière or an Æolian contemporary with Bach! What uncertainties and errors could be avoided, for instance, if the distant echo of the Matthäus-Passion, conducted by the composer, could still reach us.
Is it not truly admirable to be able to record the interpretation of a musical work with absolute exactitude and to know that this record will remain as an unalterable document, a certain testimony, rigorously true today, which will not change tomorrow—the quintessential interpretation that will not vary for all eternity?2

But enough about the organists—it’s the patrons that got me going. One of the book’s appendices is an alphabetical list of those who purchased Aeolian organs (page 384). Another is an Opus List that includes the street addresses of Aeolian installations (page 319). Published lists don’t always make good reading, but when I started flipping back and forth between these two I started humming Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood song while in effect reading the Manhattan phone book!
With the help of these lists, I’ve imagined a walking tour of some very special residences, all home to Aeolian organs. Let’s start on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 92nd Street in Manhattan. Central Park is on the west side of Fifth. When we stand with our backs to the Park we’re looking at the home of Felix Warburg. Mr. Warburg was in the diamond business, and was one of New York’s most enthusiastic musical patrons, serving as a member of the board of directors of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Philharmonic Society. In the 1930s he rescued many prominent Jews from Germany and supported the emigration of musicians such as Yehudi Menuhin and Jascha Heifetz.3 Mr. Warburg’s Aeolian organ (Opus 1054, II/22) was installed in 1909.
We walk south to 90th Street to find the residence of Andrew Carnegie. Inside is Aeolian’s Opus 895 with three manuals and 44 ranks, built in 1900.4 Mr. Carnegie, founder of the Carnegie Steel Corporation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was an active philanthropist whose generosity resulted in what is now Carnegie-Mellon University. His foundation was responsible for the construction of 2,509 public libraries throughout the English-speaking world.5 And since Mr. Carnegie believed that “music is a religion,” the Carnegie Organ Fund gave millions of dollars in matching grants to help build more than 8,800 pipe organs.6 Walter C. Gale was organist to the Carnegie family for seventeen years, arriving at the house at seven o’clock every morning they were in town. Mrs. Carnegie kept a log book of their Atlantic crossings in which she wrote about their return from Liverpool on December 10, 1901, driving directly to their new home to find “Mr. Gale playing the organ and the garden all covered in snow.”7 One door south from Mr. Carnegie is the residence of Jacob Ruppert8, brewing magnate (Knickerbocker Beer) and owner of the New York Yankees. Unfortunately Mr. Ruppert’s was not the complete household—no Aeolian organ. Still heading south, we cross East 89th Street and pass the Guggenheim Museum. At 990 Fifth Avenue (at 80th Street—two blocks south of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) we find the residence of Frank W. Woolworth who nickel-and-dimed himself into prominence with a chain of stores bearing his name. Mr. Woolworth was one of Aeolian’s best customers. His first instrument was #874 (II/16, 1899). In 1910 the organ at 990 5th Avenue was enlarged to three manuals and 37 ranks (Opus 1144). But why limit yourself to just a city organ? Mr. Woolworth installed Opus 1318 (II/23, 1915) in his second residence, which he called Winfield (his middle name) in Glen Cove (Long Island), New York. Winfield was destroyed by fire in 1916 but fortunately for the local trades and for the Aeolian company, it was rebuilt at three times the original cost, and Mr. Woolworth bought his fourth and largest Aeolian organ, Opus 1410 (IV/107).9 Installed in 1918, this grand organ included the first independent 32¢ Diapason in an Aeolian residence organ.10
Frank Woolworth was one of Aeolian’s few patrons who could actually play the organ. He was wholly devoted to Aeolian organs, to the company, and to the music it provided. His contract for Opus 874 included 50 rolls of his choosing and free membership in the Aeolian Music Library for three years to include an average of twelve rolls per week.11 When mentioning Aeolian rolls, it’s interesting to note that in 1904 the price of the roll-recording of Victor Herbert’s Symphonic Fantasy was $9.25 and a worker in the Aeolian factory earned $11 per week.12 Frank Taft, art director of the Aeolian Company, was one of Woolworth’s close friends. It was Mr. Taft who played the organ for Woolworth’s funeral at his home at 990 Fifth Avenue (Opus 1144) in April of 1919.13
Our tour continues six blocks south to the home of Simon B. Chapin at Fifth and 74th. I wouldn’t have recognized Mr. Chapin’s name without having had an encounter with his “country organ” several years ago. Mr. Chapin was a successful stockbroker. Among other pursuits, he invested his immense personal wealth in large and successful real estate ventures. Most notable among these was his partnership with Franklin Burroughs in the development of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina into a popular resort. The firm of Burroughs & Chapin developed the Seaside Inn (Myrtle Beach’s first oceanfront hotel), and the landmark Myrtle Beach Pavilion. The new shopping district was anchored by the Chapin Company General Store, and to this day Burroughs & Chapin is a prominent real estate development company. He built a lakefront vacation home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 1898, about 75 feet from the shore. The house presents a 115-foot façade that includes a 55-foot screened porch. Aeolian’s Opus 1000 (II/18) was installed there in 1906. He must have been pleased with the instrument because that same year he purchased a two-manual instrument with 15 ranks for his home on Fifth Avenue (Opus 1018).14 One block further south on Fifth Avenue and a couple doors east on 73rd Street we find the home of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer where Aeolian’s Opus 924 (II/13) was installed in 1902. Edward Rechlin was organist to the Pulitzer family, playing from 9:30 to 10:00 each evening they were in town. He was paid $20 an evening and $25 for a family wedding.15
Keep going east on 73rd Street, turn right on Madison and walk one block south to East 72nd and you’ll find the home of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Now this guy knew something about quality of design, and the folks at Aeolian must have been very pleased when Mr. Tiffany contracted for Opus 925 (II/12) in 1902. And once again, a city organ wasn’t enough—Aeolian’s Opus 1146 (II/27) was installed at Tiffany’s second home in Cold Spring Harbor, New York in 1910.16
By the way, Mr. Tiffany’s appreciation of the Aeolian organ was shared by his clients. The Dodge brothers, Horace and John, started their career building automobile chassis for the Ford Motor Company. It didn’t take them long to realize that they would make more money building entire cars, and they formed the company that still bears their name. They each had large Aeolian organs in their Michigan residences. Horace’s first organ was Opus 1175 (II/15) and his second was Opus 1319 (IV/80). John’s only Aeolian was Opus 1444 (III/76). Perhaps Horace was threatened by his brother catching up because in 1920 he purchased Opus 1478. With two manuals and 16 ranks, this organ was not so impressive by itself, but its setting certainly was. It was installed in his steam-powered yacht, the Delphine. The Delphine was 257 feet long, had five decks and a crew of 58, and its interior appointments were designed by Louis Tiffany. The organ was installed across from the fireplace in the walnut-paneled music room.17 It’s fun to imagine Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Dodge sharing their appreciation of the Aeolian organs at Tiffany’s drawing board over snifters of cognac.
From Louis Tiffany’s house, we walk two blocks south on Madison Avenue, then back west to Fifth Avenue, to the home of Henry Clay Frick, another steel industrialist from Pittsburgh. The Frick family moved to New York in 1905 and rented the William H. Vanderbilt residence on Fifth Avenue at East 51st Street (no organ). During this period they built a vacation home at Pride’s Crossing, Massachusetts, and Aeolian Opus 1008 (III/44) was installed there in 1906. Once that house was complete, the Frick family started building their own home in Manhattan at One East 70th Street, on the corner of Fifth Avenue, opposite Central Park. This home was graced by Aeolian 1263 (IV/72), which was shipped from the factory in March of 1914. Mr. Frick also donated an Aeolian organ (Opus 1334, IV/64) to Princeton University in 1915, where it was installed in Proctor Hall of the Graduate College.18
We’ve walked 24 blocks, and I’d like to show you one other organ. It’s a little too far to walk so we’ll take a cab. Charles Schwab, the first president of U.S. Steel, built his West Side home to occupy the entire block between 72nd and 73rd streets on Riverside Drive. With 90 bedrooms it was the largest residence in Manhattan, but Mr. Schwab started small in the Aeolian department—Opus 961 (1904) had only two manuals and 33 ranks. Perhaps he was inspired by his steel colleague Mr. Frick when he ordered the enlargement of the organ (Opus 1032, 1907) to four manuals and 66 ranks.19 We might imagine that Frick’s response was to up the ante with Opus 1263 (IV/72). Do you suppose that the man from Aeolian was encouraging these guys to outdo one another?
Our little tour has taken us past some of Manhattan’s grandest sites. Many of the homes I’ve mentioned have been replaced by modern high-rise luxury condominiums, but it’s fun to imagine a day when Fifth Avenue was dominated by some of the grandest single-family homes ever built. What was it about the Aeolian organ that excited the interest of this group? What extravagant home furnishings are available today that can compare to a $25,000 or $35,000 pipe organ built in 1910 or 1920? However we answer those questions, the Aeolian Company got it right for about 30 years. Then came the Great Depression.

Michael Barone, a native of Kingston, Pennsylvania and graduate (Bachelor of Music History) of the Oberlin Conservatory, has been employed by Minnesota Public Radio since 1968. His Pipedreams program entered national radio syndication in 1982. Jack Bethards is president and tonal director of Schoenstein & Co. Organ Builders, San Francisco, California. Michael Friesen, of Denver, Colorado, is an organ historian who specializes in the history of organbuilding in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. He was president of the Organ Historical Society from 2003 to 2007. Orpha Ochse is Professor of Music Emerita at Whittier College, Whittier, California, and author of several books on the history of the organ and organ playing. Barbara Owen is Librarian of the AGO Organ Library at Boston University and author of several books on the organ and its music. Frederick Swann has been a church and concert organist for nearly seven decades. He is the immediate past president of the American Guild of Organists, and although semi-retired he maintains a full schedule of teaching, recording, and performing activity. John Weaver lives in West Glover, Vermont, having retired from three long-term positions as Director of Music at New York’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and head of the organ departments at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. He has honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Westminster College and the Curtis Institute.

Centennial Celebration:
A new beginning
Early in the 20th century, the organ functioned as a community resource. Municipal instruments proliferated, organ concerts were attended by throngs, and competition for popular attention was relatively minimal. Organ installations garnered plenty of press, people enjoyed the effects of which the organ was capable, and famous recitalists (Lemare, Guilmant, Dupré, Bonnet) drew huge crowds.
But things change, always, and for the organ, the post-war (WWII) cultural shifts were monumental. Radio and television offered easy ‘entertainment’, and, along with the proliferation of symphony orchestras, undercut the civic organ’s necessity as a musical means and medium. And an increasingly intellectual direction in concert-giving (and music appreciation) stratified audiences.
Even when some of us were growing up (1950s-plus), the organ had two pivotal superstars whose prominence (and PR savvy) positioned them prominently in the minds of the general population. In those days, players still were the focus, instruments second, and the music simply the conduit.
But the fascination with organ history, period instruments, repertoire, and performance practice has taken the focus off of the virtuoso, and while we have learned a great deal about many things organic, along the way the cult of the performer has faded, and with it the audience.
Still, it could be argued that at this present time we are in a ‘golden age’ for the organ. The number of astonishingly talented young players is amazing, with more skilled youngsters on the way. New instruments of superb quality, in an incredible array of styles and venues, are being built, while historic organs representing every possible era and nationality have been carefully refurbished. We know more about and play more repertoire than ever before, and contemporary composers continue to be attracted to the instrument.
Yet the general public seems uninvolved. Even concerts on the big, new organs in our concert halls generally do not generate crowds of a size in any way comparable to their counterparts in the 1920s and ’30s.
So, unlike 50 years ago when the scene was lively and fun and the person-in-the-street was engaged by organ activity, these days we struggle to demonstrate relevance and can’t simply go along for the ride. Though in so many ways the situation is better than ever, the challenges for the future are as great as they have ever been (and there have been plenty of challenges in past centuries).
As one colleague recently reflected: “We must enhance the quality of life of our listeners, and reach out to communicate the emotional aspects of our music to our audiences, or else all just becomes more noise pollution, something of which we have too much already.”
I expect and hope that The Diapason will be an active participant in, conduit of, and catalyst for those processes that will keep the organ alive in the 21st century, as it has for the past 100 years. If so, this Centennial Celebration will be a new beginning.
Anyone who is interested in the pipe organ has, at some point or another, been introduced to The Diapason. The combination of this magazine’s sleek, non-standard proportions and its efficiently packaged and engaging content proved irresistible, particularly to the young neophyte.
But once the curiosity value had faded, The Diapason—this rare and informative ‘inside passage’ to the realm of the King of Instruments—continued to beguile with its news (and gossip), the important discoveries, and the thoughtful musings on historical and philosophical organ-related topics.
I first subscribed to The Diapason while still a teen, but then let the subscription lapse (money was tight and I could access the journal at the library). Sooner than later I wanted to reinstate my connection, and have been a regular reader for longer than seems comfortable to confess.
Obviously, others are in the same boat, else we’d not be celebrating a centenary here. Heaven knows that the organ, which itself has enjoyed the passage of numerous centennials, generates more copy than any one publication can embrace. I applaud The Diapason for doing its part while maintaining its quality of reportage—and quirky but charming format—with élan and grace through these many decades. Bravo! Now, bring on the second hundred years!
—Michael Barone

Reflections on The Diapason
I wonder how many others were as guilty as I of spending far too much study time in high school and college poring over old issues of The Diapason? Those pages, filled with news of the ups and downs of the organ industry and all of the colorful characters in lofts and factories, were an irresistible lure to daydream about the past and what the future might hold for a young man who also spent far too much time sketching stoplists during lectures. When I joined Schoenstein & Co. in 1977, the opportunities for such fun increased: the company archive started with the April 1911 issue.
What I liked then, and still do today, is that the format of The Diapason has changed only slightly over all these years (not even as much as The New Yorker)! What other magazine in business since 1909 can say that? In fact, how many magazines that old are still in business? The constancy of The Diapason, which stuck to its guns through the great boom of factory organ building during its first 20 years, the tough times of depression and war, the second big boom in the 1950s, and then the controversies that occurred about all aspects of organ design, while the structure of the industry changed from predominantly large manufacturers to a mix of large and small—a kind of cottage industry turning out every kind of tonal and mechanical style imaginable—gave me the feeling that no matter how much things changed, there would always be a pipe organ culture in America.
A delightful recent aspect of The Diapason is its mixture of serious and silly. The Diapason makes room (literally) for both. It is a place for lengthy, academic articles on arcane subjects and also for lighter fare—just check out the classified ad section! [See examples from the whimsy file, page 14.]
I hope The Diapason will continue to stay the course, amid shifting currents, in its second century. As our culture evolves more and more quickly, the organ world will value a familiar friend—The Diapason.
—Jack M. Bethards

Siegfried E. Gruenstein’s success
When Siegfried E. Gruenstein began publication of The Diapason in Chicago in December 1909, he was the first person to create a general-purpose journal devoted to the organ since Everett E. Truette’s effort in Boston in the 1890s. Truette’s journal, The Organ, unfortunately lasted only through two volumes, from May 1892 to April 1894. Truette’s precedent, in turn, was Eugene Thayer’s The Organists’ Journal and Review, itself also a short-lived publication issued in Boston from March 1874 to January 1877. (Both the Thayer and the Truette have been reprinted in complete sets, which are available from the Organ Historical Society.)
The Diapason, however, was to have a different fate. Here it is, still being published a hundred years later, a feat that has been matched by only a handful of journals throughout American history. Publishing is a hard business, and one fraught with constant tension over printers’ deadlines, obtaining and editing copy from multiple contributors, keeping advertisers and subscribers happy, and the like. It is also not usually highly profitable because of the relative mismatch between overhead and operating expenses versus what advertisers and subscribers are willing to pay for distribution and content, respectively. Cost issues were the factors in the demise of the above-mentioned journals, undoubtedly also affected by the fact that the organ world was, and still is, very “thin” compared to circulation numbers possible for mass-market publications.
However, Gruenstein’s effort was timely. The organ market in the United States was reasonably affluent and growing, and by 1909 was entering a period of significant technological change, with increasing demand for instruments built with forms of electric action to replace traditional mechanical-action organs. (Tubular-pneumatic action, a transitional form of technology, had obtained a foothold in the market beginning in the 1880s, but it was not destined to survive much longer.) Thus many organbuilding firms entered the field, and existing ones grew substantially, in the decade after The Diapason was founded. (To give some sense of numerical perspective about this period, M. P. Möller, Inc., for one example, gradually expanded its factory to the point that it could produce an organ every day; the combined annual output of the ten largest manufactories in peak years before the Great Depression began has been estimated at around 1,000 instruments.) Soon there was plenty of publicity about new organs and the activities of organbuilders to go around.
The Diapason became known as the journal where one could find multiple stoplists, descriptions, and pictures of new organs each month, and of course for organists, reading such material is almost akin to an addiction. Usually, an instrument was guaranteed publicity twice—when a contract was announced, and when it was installed and dedicated; often, readers could find snippets of work-in-progress news as well. The journal also promoted the activities of organists, publishing summaries of recital programs, and tracking their careers and travels. To amass such detail, and then publish it regularly every month, must have been a herculean task for Gruenstein, but he did it. Advertisers and subscribers flocked to The Diapason in droves, and he effectively was able to “corner” the market, because no other general-purpose organ periodical exerted significant competition. The American Organist, in its original incarnation as the “house journal” of the American Guild of Organists, was no match for The Diapason until T. Scott Buhrman’s editorship from the 1940s to the 1960s. Regardless, even in spite of the lean years of the Great Depression and World Wars I and II, The Diapason has held its own to the present.
That Gruenstein’s business model was successful is shown by The Diapason today, which still largely follows the format he established. In general, as readership demographics change, periodicals must adjust in order to survive, but a loyal following by organists, organbuilders, and friends of the organ has continued to ensure The Diapason’s success. And of course, today’s “gossip” becomes tomorrow’s “primary source material” for historians, and in that sense, The Diapason’s rich store of back issues, which is often plumbed for information about the twentieth-century organ, is priceless. With adaptation to changes in technology and electronic publishing, here’s to hoping that it will continue to be published indefinitely, and therefore also prove to be a gold mine for information about the organ in the twenty-first century as well.
—Michael D. Friesen

Celebrating a Centennial
The Diapason—what a treasure trove of American organ history! I have leafed through all its pages, discovering not just the facts I was particularly interested in, but also the broad contexts surrounding those facts. For the person who really wants to understand the “ups and downs” of the past century’s organ world, I suggest a decade-by-decade prowl through old issues of The Diapason. Of course, such a process is by its nature leisurely, but it compensates for inefficiency with its revelations about the evolution of style, and changing opinions regarding the essential nature of the organ.
Facts are also there in abundance. One particularly thorough example of journalistic reporting is a blow-by-blow description of the 1936–1937 Federal Trade Commission trials to determine if the electronic instrument developed by the Hammond Clock Company was indeed an organ, and if it could produce effects equal to those of a pipe organ. At one point in the trials, block and tackle were used to raise a Hammond instrument to the top of a pole for some outdoor acoustical tests. Well, you’ll just have to read the whole story in those old Diapasons. Then in the 1940s there were the chronicles of World War II: young organists and organ builders drafted into the armed forces; organ shops converted to war work; restrictions on the use of materials essential for the war effort. So many stories!
One wonders how our own time will appear to the reader half a century or more in the future. However complex and uncertain our present time may seem as we experience it, that lucky reader will be able to see the big picture—where we’ve been, where we’re going—by leafing through the pages of volume 100 and succeeding volumes of The Diapason’s Second Century.
—Orpha Ochse

The Diapason at the century mark
I first encountered The Diapason as a teen-aged baby-sitter. The youngsters were the offspring of my organ teacher, and I minded them in exchange for organ lessons. The latest issue of The Diapason was usually on her coffee table, and after the kids had been tucked into bed, I would read it from cover to cover, soaking up all that arcane information about organ recitals, organists, and the latest new organs in each monthly issue as only a young person newly introduced to the fascinating world of the organ could. By the time I was off to college I had my own subscription, which continues to this day.
While various general musical periodicals had carried news and occasional articles pertaining to organs and organists during the 19th century, it was only near the end of that century that any English-language journals dealing exclusively with the organ made their appearance, the earliest in North America being Eugene Thayer’s Organist’s Quarterly Journal and Review, 1874–1876. Others, equally short-lived, would follow. But it would appear that it was not until the first decade of the 20th century that a large enough potential readership had evolved to sustain a substantial national organ periodical. Thus in 1909 Siegfried Emanuel Gruenstein, a journalist for the Chicago Evening Post and organist of the Lake Forest Presbyterian Church, melded his two professional interests and established The Diapason, the first issue of which appeared in December 1909.
Over the years, The Diapason has served at various times as the official journal of the Organ Builders Association of America, the National Association of Organists, the Canadian College of Organists, the Hymn Society, and the American Guild of Organists. Eventually these organizations either ceased to exist or produced their own periodicals, and for the last several decades The Diapason has stood on its own feet. Today, having outlived various later competitors, it still stands as the only independent organ-related periodical still published in America. And, having reached the century mark, it is also the oldest, and still going strong.
To browse through back issues of The Diapason is to watch the entire history of the American organ in the twentieth century unfold in print and picture. The lives of numerous organists, well known or obscure, are chronicled from their debut recital or first church position to their obituaries. Organ builders come to prominence, change leadership, merge, and fade away or close. Organs for major churches, colleges and cathedrals are featured, many of them to be later replaced by newer organs that are likewise featured. Changing tastes in organ literature are reflected in reviews and recital programs, and contemporary composers of every period critiqued or interviewed. We can trace the rise and fall of residence and theatre organs, and the evolutionary history of the orchestral, American classic, neo-Baroque and eclectic movements in tonal design through stoplists and commentary, as well as opinionated give-and-take in the Letters to the Editor. Even the advertisements (including the classifieds) have a story to tell. And this tradition of chronicling the American organ scene continues into the 21st century.
Read any book about an organist, organ composer, or organ builder of the 20th century, as well as many books and articles concerning organs, organ music and organists, and one is more likely than not to find The Diapason cited in footnotes and bibliography. Researchers (including this writer) love its inimitable resources—and earnestly hope that all 100 years of it will one day be digitized in keyword-searchable form. But we read it too as the denizens of our little organ world have always read it, to keep up with what is going on among our contemporaries and to benefit from their scholarship in worthwhile articles. And yes, I still read every issue cover to cover when it arrives!
—Barbara Owen

The Diapason:
100 years and counting
My sincere congratulations on the 100th anniversary of The Diapason! This historic journal—the longest-lived of its type in the world—has faithfully chronicled the history of organs, organists, church music, and related fields in an informative, interesting, and educational manner. Further, it has done so fairly and without bias as ideas and fads of organ culture have changed over the years.
I received my first issue of The Diapason in 1946 when, as a young teen-ager, I joined the American Guild of Organists. To me, at that age, the primary benefit of AGO membership was the monthly arrival of this fascinating publication, which was then the official journal of the Guild. It immediately enlarged my view and knowledge of a profession that was to become the focus of my life. I devoured every word of each issue, and over this period of nearly 63 years have saved all 750 copies, thinking that someday when I was old I’d sit on the porch and reread them. That hasn’t happened yet, but I have on numerous occasions consulted back copies for news and specific articles.
Soon after I entered Northwestern University in 1948, I was introduced to S. E. Gruenstein, the founder, editor and publisher of The Diapason. He was a kindly gentleman, interested in all matters related to the organ world, and was especially encouraging to young organists. Over the years his successors have continued to update and enlarge the journal. The look and the content have continued to grow and have reached a high standard of excellence.
The longevity of The Diapason affirms that it continues to reach many organists and enthusiasts who believe in the quality and value of its offerings. I am certain that others join me in expressing the hope that the advent of a new century of publication will herald its indefinite continuation.
—Frederick Swann

Recollections of The Diapason
When I started reading The Diapason I was about 10 years old—it was probably 1947. I remember the many pages of tiny print listing dozens of organ recital programs from around the county. I assume that they were all set by hand with individual pieces of type. I also recall that there were lots of advertisements for organ pipes for sale. I responded to several of these with letters, which I hoped would not reveal my age or inability to pay. I had visions of buying some ten ranks and building an organ with them. Congratulations on 100 great years.
—John Weaver

A Chapter in the Economics of Pipe Organ Building

R. E. Coleberd is an economist and petroleum industry executive.

Roosevelt

E. M. Skinner

Aeolian Skinner and G. Donald Harrison

Aeolian

The Automotive Industry:

Merchants and Manufacturers:

Publishers:

Railroads and Public Utilities:

Steel and Oil:

Wurlitzer

Holtkamp

Schlicker

Fisk

Summary and Conclusions