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.

It will soon be 20 years since The Aeolian Pipe Organ and Its Music was published by the Organ Historical Society. This landmark volume has been out of print for so long that copies now sell for more than $500. A second edition, revised and greatly expanded, is now in publication and, in addition to emendations and many new photographs, the annotated opus list of over 900 organs (with contract dates, prices, additions, and alterations) has been updated to reflect subsequent activity. The Aeolian Pipe Organ and Its Music is the story of America's oldest, largest, and longest-lived residence organ company, whose instruments provided music in the home in the era before the wide-spread use of the phonograph and radio. A list of Aeolian patrons is a veritable Who's Who in American business, industry, and finance. This book not only documents the organs, but also the music they were programmed to reproduce, Aeolian's commissions from Saint-Sa ns, Stravinsky, Stokowski, and Humperdinck, and their reproduction of performances of renowned artists. A special section features a wealth of unpublished photographs of Aeolian installations. In addition to a study of the 54 recording organists, dozens of stoplists are included and complete catalogues of Aeolian organ rolls. As a companion volume to Rollin Smith's Pipe Organs of the Rich and Famous, this notable publication makes for reading as fascinating as it is entertaining.

For centuries, pipe organs stood at the summit of musical and technological achievement, admired as the most complex and intricate mechanisms the human race had yet devised. In All The Stops, New York Times journalist Craig Whitney journeys through the history of the American pipe organ and brings to life the curious characters who have devoted their lives to its music. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, organ music was wildly popular in America. Organ builders in New York and New England could hardly fill the huge demand for both concert hall and home organs. Master organbuilders found ingenious ways of using electricity to make them sound like orchestras. Organ players developed cult followings and bitter rivalries. One movement arose to restore to American organs the clarity and precision that baroque organs had in centuries past, while another took electronic organs to the rock concert halls, where younger listeners could be found. But while organbuilders and organists were fighting with each other, popular audiences lost interest in the organ. Today, organs are beginning to make a comeback in concert halls and churches across America. Craig Whitney brings the story to life and up to date in a humorous, engaging book about the instruments and vivid personalities that inspired his lifelong passion: the great art of the majestic pipe organ. Hear the sounds of some of the pipe organs featured in ALL THE STOPS

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.