Afternoon seminar

Organ Journeys through World Exhibits and Archives

Anne Laver, USA

This seminar explores the fascinating world’s fairs of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their role in reflecting and defining organ culture in Europe and North America. From the organ exhibits by Willis, Hill, and Schulze at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851, through the important concert series at the Trocadéro at the Paris Universelle Exhibition in 1878, to Guilmant’s performances at the Chicago and St. Louis expositions in 1893 and 1904, the organ was a significant component of these global events. Annette Richards, Nathan Laube, and Anne Laver will discuss how these events shaped organ building trends, virtuoso culture, and concert programming in this period.

In the second part of this seminar, Eleanor Smith-Guido, Fredrik Tobin-Dodd, and Paul Peeters will introduce the SONORA project, an initiative to digitise significant archival collections related to historical organs in Sweden. The team will share some of the wonderful stories these archives illuminate and the possibilities for future research.