Book Reviews: "Das Harmonium in Deutschland: Bau, wirtschaftliche Bedeutung und musikalische Nutzung eines 'historischen' Musikinstruments," by Christian Ahrens and Gregor Klinke; "The American Reed Organ and the Harmonium," by Robert F. Gellerman; and "Gellerman's International Reed Organ Atlas," by Robert F. Gellerman

JOHN KOSTER

CHRISTIAN AHRENS and GREGOR KLINKE (eds.): Das Harmonium in Deutschland: Bau, wirtschaftliche Bedeutung und musikalische Nutzung eines 'historischen' Musikinstrumentes . Fachbuchreihe das Musikinstrument, Bd. 60. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Erwin Bochinsky, 1996. 312 pp., B & W illus, musical examples, bibliography. ISBN 3-923639-05-8. Price: DM76. (Text in German)

ROBERT F. GELLERMAN : The American Reed Organ and the Harmonium . Vestal, New York: Vestal Press, 1996. viii, 303 pp., B & W illus, musical examples, bibliography, index. ISBN 1-879511-12-6. Price: $29.95.

ROBERT F. GELLERMAN : Gellerman's International Reed Organ Atlas . Second edition. Lanham, Maryland: Vestal Press, 1998. xiii, 316 pp., B & W illus, bibliography. ISBN 1-879511-34-7. Price: $35.00.

Christian Ahrens begins the preface to Das Harmonium in Deutschland by observing that the harmonium (which he and his collaborators use as a generic term for all reed organs ¹ ) is today generally regarded as an instrument of dubious worth and that the literature on the subject is extremely sparse. These observations could well be applied to most, if not all, European and American free-reed instruments. Reed organs, along with harmonicas, accordions, and the like, being instruments of relatively modern origin, usually mass-produced and typically employed in amateur or popular music-making, have, until recently, failed to stir much interest among organological scholars, who have been preoccupied with the instruments of historical European art-music on the one hand or, on the other, with ethnographic subjects. ² Most publications about western free-reed instruments have been produced by manufacturers, technicians, and players or, more recently, by collectors, who usually are not prepared to approach the subject according to established standards of scholarly research. Of course, only gratitude is due this last category of reed-organ enthusiasts, first for so indefatigably acquiring and preserving instruments and documentary materials; then for so

¹ According to the accepted terminology in the English-speaking world, 'reed organ' denotes any free-reed keyboard instrument, while 'harmonium' is reserved for a certain type of reed organ with a pressure (rather than a suction) system and an 'expression' stop by which the wind bypasses the reservoir so that the wind pressure, hence the volume of sound, can be controlled by the force that the player's feet exert on the feeder bellows. See James H....