Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, during the first quarter of the 20th century, Alabama-born organist and composer Lee Orville Erwin, like many of the 20th century's great American composers, spent time studying in Paris. From 1930 until 1931 Erwin studied in France with organist André Marchal and the harmony teachers Jean Verd and Nadia Boulanger. This formative experience greatly shaped his compositional style and aesthetic. Upon returning to the United States, Erwin began his lengthy career in radio and television working with Arthur Godfrey. In 1967, Erwin was commissioned by the American Theater Organ Society to compose organ music for the Gloria Swanson film Queen Kelly. It was this film that led his career back into the consoles of the great American theater organs. He toured extensively, playing thousands of concerts of organ music during silent film showings. He thus ushered in the silent film revival, continuing the genre of live music performance accompanying film. Erwin, believing that cue sheets originally compiled for these films during the silent film era were "full of the musical cliché's of the 1920s," composed new scores to over 100 silent films. An American Organist in Paris presents Lee Orville Erwin's letters from France to his family in 1930-1931. In these letters, Erwin recounts his daily experiences and encounters with some of the 20th century's greatest musicians and teachers. He writes of his lessons with Marchal, Verd, and Boulanger and dinner parties with Olivier Messiaen. Erwin's letters not only provide the singular experiences of a young musician but also reflect the common experiences shared by the multitude of American composers who studied in France during this time. These letters are extensively footnoted to provide clarity and background information of the locations and personalities discussed. A biographical chapter on Erwin, which outlines his extensive musical career and impact on the silent film music revival in the 20th century, is also included. This book will serve as a unique glimpse into the life of one of America's most prolific composers for the theater organ.

Although women have been teaching and performing music for centuries, their stories are often missing from traditional accounts of the history of music education. In Women Music Educators in the United States: A History, Sondra Wieland Howe provides a comprehensive narrative of women teaching music in the United States from colonial days until the end of the twentieth century. Defining music education broadly to include home, community, and institutional settings, Howe draws on sources from musicology, the history of education, and social history to offer a new perspective on the topic. In colonial America, women sang in church choirs and taught their children at home. In the first half of the nineteenth century, women published hymns, taught in academies and rural schoolhouses, and held church positions. After the Civil War, women taught piano and voice, went to college, taught in public schools, and became involved in national music organizations. With the expansion of public schools in the first half of the twentieth century, women supervised public school music programs, published textbooks, and served as officers of national organizations. They taught in settlement houses and teacher-training institutions, developed music appreciation programs, and organized women’s symphony orchestras. After World War II, women continued their involvement in public school choral and instrumental music, developed new methodologies, conducted research, and published in academia. Howe’s study traces this evolution in the roles played by women educators in the American music education system, illuminating an area of research that has been ignored far too long. Women Music Educators in the United States: A History complements current histories of music education and supports undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of music, music education, American education, and women’s studies. It will interest not only musicologists, educational historians, and scholars of women’s studies, but music educators teaching in public and private schools and independent music teachers.

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.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks meets Get Out in this “startling…powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) investigation of racial inequality at the core of the heart transplant race. In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a white businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge. The circumstances surrounding his death reflect the long legacy of mistreating African Americans that began more than a century before with cadaver harvesting and worse. It culminated in efforts to win the heart transplant race in the late 1960s. Featuring years of research and fresh reporting, along with a foreword from social justice activist Ben Jealous, “this powerful book weaves together a medical mystery, a legal drama, and a sweeping history, its characters confronting unprecedented issues of life and death under the shadows of centuries of racial injustice” (Edward L. Ayers, author of The Promise of the New South).