The Organ as a Mirror of its Time: North European Reflections, 1610-2000 - Tapa blanda

The book is well designed, permitting selective reading on various musical, religious, and intellectual milieus throughout the past four centuries. (Journal of Interdisciplinary History)

... a fascinating volume ... Kerala Snyder has done an excellent job at providing cohesion, clarity, and pleasurable reading. There is something here for everyone, and everyone should buy this book. (Westfield)

Reading these essays is a little like opening a box of buried treasure. (Westfield)

This collection of some twenty-five essays does several useful things for both the Connoiseur and the Amateur of Music (to use J.S.Bach's terms'). It describes and illustrates with a CD six conspicuously interesting organs of northern Europe, and it puts them in various contexts, cultural, historical, and musical. (Times Literary Supplement)

Because it has always represented a rich collaboration of the music, art, architecture, handicraft and science of its day, the organ, more than any other instrument, continues to reflect the spirit of the age in which it was built. The Organ as a Mirror of its Time, the first book to consider this instrument's historical and cultural significance, reflects the efforts of twenty leading scholars of the organ.
The book chronicles the history of six organs in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, at least one specimen for every century from 1600 to the present. By considering their original contexts and their histories since they were built, as well as the extraordinary coincidences that link them together, the book offers a unique perspective on the cultural history of northern Europe. A CD with appropriate repertoire played on each of the six instruments accompanies the book.