Product Description

This Companion is an essential guide to all aspects of the organ and its music. The early chapters examine the instrument's history and construction, and consider the scientific basis of its sounds, pitch and tuning. Central chapters investigate the practical art of learning and playing, and introduce the complex area of performance practice, while the final section explores the vast repertoire of organ music, by country, focusing on a selection of the most important traditions. The contributors are all experts in their field, making this the most authoritative reference book currently available.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #476867 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 354 pages

Review
"...The Cambridge Companion to the Organ...offers the reader an excellent summary of organbuilding, organ performance, and the major schools of organ music. For scholarly, yet accessible surveys of the major schools of organ music, the Companion stands alone." The American Organist

"The Cambridge Companions to Music series offers a concise and useful overview of several musical instruments and a selection of composers. The volume is well laid out and thorough in its coverage, although intentionally limited because of the instrument's long and expansive history." Choice

"...this volume...is to be recommended to the accomplished organist or organ enthusiast. The essays provide much interesting and accurate information and should provoke much stimulating conversation." Peter V. Picerno, Notes

Customer Reviews

Better than I'd expected
The comments from "a reader" (anonymous and pseudonymous reviews should be discouraged as a matter of Amazon.com policy; in non-life-or-death matters like critiques of musicology texts, surely the courage to sign your name is a prerequisite?) indicated a rip-off. In fact this publication turns out to be useful far beyond the confines of Dutch and Central European baroque topics. There can be no argument with complaints about unevenness. One section (the chapter on Austrian / South German baroque composers) is written with genuine panache; another (on Franck, his precursors, and his successors in the Gallo-Belgian romantic repertoire) is almost equally worthwhile; the advice on optimal practice methods for organists is uniformly well-judged; alas, all too many of the other sections read like - and probably were - extracts from humdrum doctoral dissertations.

The treatment of Spanish and Portuguese 16th- and 17th-century organ writing is, at least to the non-specialist writing this review, largely incomprehensible (and where not incomprehensible, is dubious: can it really be true that the "royal trumpet" stops which characterized Iberian organs, and which so well suit 17th-century Iberian "battle music", are an 18th-century invention?). A more obviously encyclopedic approach, such as Julie Anne Sadie employed when she edited Cambridge's COMPANION TO BAROQUE MUSIC, would have been superior to what we have here.

Still, here is one church organist who feels very grateful to this tome's staff-notation passages for having introduced him to valuable pieces by Teutons (the mid-17th-century's J. K. Kerll), Americans (the late-19th-century Dudley Buck), and Englishmen (somebody named Henry Smart, who apparently died in 1879), hitherto mere vaguely-contemplated names, or else, in Smart's case, not even that. Better to treat this COMPANION as a goad to the performer who seeks fresh and agreeable sheet music, rather than as a reference resource.

Only a companion to baroque organs and uneven.
Those who are used to the Oxford series of "Companions" will be surprised to find this Cambridge Companion is not an encyclopedic reference book. It is a collection of articles on a broad range of topics--construction, esthetics, performance technique and the repertoire--with a very uneven level. Some articles address the basics (sit up straight while you are playing) while others assume that you know everything already (off hand references to organs you should know about.) Almost all the organs discussed in any depth are the German-Dutch baroque instruments and their modern replicas, with just a few words on large romantic instruments. In sum, it may be an interesting "read" for the connoisseur, but it isn't very useful as a reference for the interested amateur.