Established for the building of keyboard instruments, by the mid-1790s the workshop of brothers Robert and William Gray had become one of the leading organ-makers in London, with instruments in St Paul's, Covent Garden and St Martin-in-the-Fields. Under William's son John Gray, the firm built some of the largest English organs of the 1820s and 1830s, as well as exporting major instruments to Boston and Charleston in the United States. In the early 1840s, with the marriage of John Gray's daughter to Frederick Davison - a member of the circle of Bach-enthusiasts around the composer Samuel Wesley - the firm became 'Gray & Davison'. Davison was a progressive figure who reformed workshop practices, commissioned a purpose-built organ factory in Euston Road and opened a branch workshop in Liverpool to exploit the booming market for church organs in Lancashire and the north-west. Under Davison's management, the firm was responsible for significant mechanical and musical innovations, especially in the design of concert organs. Instruments such as those built in the 1850s for Glasgow City Hall, the Crystal Palace and Leeds Town Hall were heavily influenced by contemporary French practice; they were designed to perform a repertoire dominated by orchestral transcriptions. Many of the instruments made by the firm have been lost or altered; but the surviving organs in St Anne, Limehouse (1851), Usk Parish Church (1861) and Clumber Chapel (1889) testify to the quality and importance of Gray & Davison's work. This book charts the firm's history from its foundation in 1772 to Frederick Davison's death in 1889. At the same time, it describes changes in musical taste and liturgical use and explores such topics as provincial music festivals, the town hall organ, domestic music-making and popular entertainment, the building of churches and the impact on church music of the Evangelical and Tractarian movements. It will appeal to organ aficionados interested in the evolution of the English organ in the later Georgian and Victorian eras, as well as other music scholars and cultural historians. NICHOLAS THISTLETHWAITE has written extensively on the history of the English organ and other aspects of English church music, and his book, The making of the Victorian organ (1990) is recognised as the standard work on the subject. He has acted as consultant for the restoration and rebuilding of organs, most recently at St Edmundsbury Cathedral and Christ Church

Immigration, wars, industrial growth, 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.

This 1996 book describes the history of organs built in England from AD 900 to the present day.

Contains information about German organbuilders, including Heinrich Niehoff, Jacob Scherer, Dirck Hoyer, Hans Bockelmann, Hans Scherer, the younger and elder, Gottfried and Hans Christoph Fritzsche, Arp Schnitger, Friedrich Besser, Gregorius Vogel, Joachim Richborn, and Friedrich Stellwagen.

William Sweetland was a Bath organ builder who flourished from c.1847 to 1902 during which time he built about 300 organs. Gordon Curtis places this work of a provincial organ builder in the wider context of English musical life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He relates the biographical details of Sweetland's family, surveys Sweetland's organ building work and explores the organ recital repertoire of the provinces. The second part of the book consists of a Gazeteer of all known organs by Sweetland.