The symphonic organ is a style of pipe organ that flourished during the first three decades of the 20th century in town halls and other secular public venues, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has roots in the nineteenth century and the British passion for oratorios, and is a variation of the classical pipe organ. It features expanded capabilities, with many pipes imitative of orchestral instruments, and with capabilities for seamlessly adjusting volume and tone. These expansions are intended to facilitate the expressive performance of Romantic music and orchestral transcriptions. These organs are generally concert instruments as opposed to church organs. The symphonic organ has seen a revival in the US, Europe and Japan, particularly since the 1980s. George Ashdown Audsley was a prominent prophet and advocate for the Symphonic organ in his extensive writings, and the movement was a logical outgrowth of the application of electricity to organ actions and winding. Fueled by imaginative possibilities, it fulfilled the need to fill larger, often steel-frame rooms with pipe-organ tone using higher pressures and multiple expressive divisions. Organ sections could be placed at any distance from the organist. The enhanced resources gave to the player the powers of an ideal conductor who could personally shape the tonal textures of the various orchestralike sections to the artist's precise musical wishes. Added to that was traditional organ diapason tone and choruses, and the availability of a profound and sustainable bass that was all the organ's own and gave the instrument its unrivaled majesty. The leading builders of symphonic organs were Henry Willis & Sons in the UK and Ernest M. Skinner in the US, following the pioneering 19th-century work of Eberhard Friedrich Walcker in Germany and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in France, and inspiring the organ music of such figures as Edward Elgar, Edwin Lemare, Franz Liszt, and César Franck, respectively. The largest example is the Wanamaker Organ, installed in Philadelphia in 1911 after having been exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair, and then greatly expanded over two decades. It currently has six manuals, eleven divisions, 464 ranks, and 28,750 pipes, all powered by 36 regulators and fans totaling 173 hp. Other important examples around Philadelphia are the Skinner organ at Girard College Chapel, the Curtis Organ at Irvine Auditorium, and the Aeolian Company organ at nearby Longwood Gardens. In New Haven, Connecticut, three organbuilders assembled one of the world's largest and finest symphonic organs for Yale University in Woolsey Hall. Another excellent example of a symphonic organ can be seen and heard at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The magnificent Opus 1206 by Austin Organs, with 81 ranks and 5,261 pipes, was first played on February 12, 1925. Its first Civic Organist was the world-renowned Edwin Lemare. Led by the Chattanooga Music Club, the citizens of Chattanooga began the organ's restoration in 1987, and 20 years later, on July 2, 2007, it was re-dedicated at a concert performed by Wanamaker organist Peter Richard Conte. Municipal symphonic organs are still in prominent use in San Diego, California and in Portland, Maine, and in 1999 a large 1920s-vintage Skinner organ was inaugurated in the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal.
