"The objectivist movement in organ performance in this country is most significant, because the United States is definitely a land of organists. Here organ playing outside of church walls is more popular than anywhere else in the world. The baroque "queen of instruments" has for the past generation been serving a useful purpose: it has acquainted music-loving people with the wide scope of nineteenth-century music, at a time when orchestra concerts could be heard in only a few cities, and of course only by those with ability to pay. Here the organist stepped in. In the days prior to records and broadcasts, his playing substituted for orchestral performance. Free recitals promoted knowledge of the literature, forcing the average organist to undergo a metamorphosis from church musician to jack-of-all-trades. Thus it became the organist's task to play not only music written specifically for his instrument, but also, in arrangements, anything in the whole range of music, ecclesiastical or secular, orchestral compositions or vocal scores. It is an open secret that not all organists (among whom are many fine scholars) are wholeheartedly in sympathy with such a practice. But the musical mores of bygone days still compel them to imitate the brass fanfare of the Light Cavalry and the sighing strings of the Liebestod in an effort to emulate as much as possible the multicolors of the orchestra palate."
Frederick Dorian, The History of Music in Performance (Norton)
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