Symphonic organ

These expansions let the organist approximate a conductor's power to shape the tonal textures of Romantic music and orchestral transcriptions.

(These are classical orchestral works re-scored for a solo organist, a practice particularly popular before technology allowed orchestras to be widely recorded and broadcast.)

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.

[3][4][5] The largest example is the Wanamaker Organ, designed by George Ashdown Audsley for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, re-installed in a Philadelphia department store in 1911, and then greatly expanded over two decades.

[10] Another excellent example of a symphonic organ can be seen and heard at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The console of the Royce Hall pipe organ at UCLA ; built by Skinner in 1930, it is an excellent example of the Symphonic Organ.