ABSTRACT
Before American music became intercontinental, in the modern age of recording, broadcast music, and the jumbo jet, it was national, localized for the most part in major American cities and cultural centers, and for many of its most distinctive personalities this is still true today. The history of American music is marked by many excellent musicians who cultivated their own gardens; they did not rise to international prominence and are not listed in the standard musical reference works, but their activities in their own musical societies can still be reckoned objectively on a par with the best of their time anywhere, and their personal teaching and influence have remained durable for decades. One of these was Melville Smith, an organist, teacher, and all-around musician who, beginning in the 1930s, promoted the rediscovery of forgotten but treasured standards in organ building. Trained first at Harvard along German pedagogical lines like those of half a century before him, and then in France as one of the earliest of a long line of distinguished pupils of Nadia Boulanger, Smith developed as a performer and teacher who summarized the best of both traditions, at a time when the newly independent voice of American music was beginning to be recognized around the world (see Figure 9.1). Melville Smith. Used by permission of Nathaniel Smith. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203054703/6bc2f193-bc73-42f4-9317-e15a5cea16be/content/fig9_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
