Quotations
If I were forced to choose one instrument only for chamber music - forced to discard all other instruments than the one chosen - I would choose the harmonium (reed organ) without hesitation; for it seems to me the most sensitively and intimately expressive of all instruments.
Its gutsy, swelling emotionality resembles so closely the tides of feeling of the human heart. No other chord - giving instrument is so capable of extreme and exquisitely controlled pianissimo. It is unique as a refining musical influence, for it tempts the player to tonal subtleties of gradation as does no other instrument. Both in chamber music and in the orchestra it provides the ideal background to the individualistic voices of the wood - winds. For all these reasons, let us spread the use of this glorious little instrument to ever wider fields.
Percy Grainger
It is a striking fact that almost all the good treatises on music -Hector Berlioz's excellent Treatise on Instrumentation forming an exception - ignore the harmonium altogether, while they treat in detail of the triangle and kettle-drum, and that there are Academies of Music which do not devote a single hour to instruction on the harmonium.
Nevertheless . . .the admirers of this instrument are ever becoming more numerous, and the instrument itself more popular. We may only hope that the recent improvements in the construction will lead to a corresponding improvement in the instruction on the instrument which has hitherto been extremely deficient, owing to the lack of efficient teachers, for even moderately good harmonium players are few and far between
August Reinhard 1905
In fact, the harmonium having a key-board like the organ and the pianoforte might easily be played by organists or pianists, without further instruction, if it were not for the art of producing the sound through the bellows, which requires careful study. It is to the want of this study, and of proper tuition, that we must ascribe the severe opinions so often passed on the harshness of the tone of the instrument - a fault which is generally the natural result of defective blowing on the part of those performers, who, strange to say, seem to think that, while every other instrument requires to be studied before they attempt to play upon it, they need only sit down to the harmonium and play after their own fashion, and then, if they produce no effect, they most inconsistently blame the instrument for it.
Nothing is trifling. Everything must be carefully looked to - every note properly placed, held or left, the greatest advantage of the harmonium being to approach as near as possible the sound of the human voice in singing - neatness, taste and expression are, above all, required to insure the approval of the true connoisseur. The harmonium is an harmonium, nothing more, nothing less. Let it be studied like any other instrument, and the performer may rest assured that he will soon be rewarded for his careful attention.