After the Philadelphia Orchestra Archives were made available at the University of Pennsylvania, I began to conduct some research on the use of the organ throughout the orchestra’s history. This project has turned out to be very interesting and allowed me to see various facets of how the orchestra was run and the priorities the orchestra held. The archives contain material from 1900 to around 2023 dispersed over hundreds of boxes. The contents of the archives vary and hold anything from programs and tickets to bank statements and personal correspondence. Because the project is not yet completed, I thought it best to describe my process as it may be of help to others wondering about doing similar projects.

One of the aspects of my research that I believe has been very helpful in allowing me to make the vast archives manageable has been limiting the nature of my work to one aspect of the orchestra: the organ. I also imposed a time constraint, focusing solely on the years 1900-2000. While the limiting of time is helpful, looking only at the organ has allowed me to discount large amounts of the archives and focus on a certain section of the content. When selecting boxes, I focus on the ones containing programming, promotional material, and any public facing content. By doing this, I have limited my research solely to how the organ was perceived by audiences and not within the orchestra. However, without that limit, I would need far more time and resources to dig through the material. Even with these limits, I still encounter folders and boxes which have very little concerning the organ, but I have learned that the information in these areas can help establish context and give insight into the “why” of the programming and soloists for the year. 

The tangible methodology consists of going through each folder in each box that I check out from Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. I am not required to wear gloves, and I can take pictures of the material. However, I cannot remove the archives from the library because they are still historical documents. Each time I encounter a program or mention of a piece to be played, I take a picture and upload it because any of the pieces could contain the organ. This process later allowed me to use AI to sort through the images and locate any references to the organ. The use of AI is necessary in this project because it allows me to validate the orchestration of each piece. AI can detect usages of the organ that are not obvious to me or I could have missed. While I will notice certain pieces or soloists that I know contain or play the organ, the use of AI to sort through large amounts of material makes the process considerably less time consuming than looking into each piece I encounter. 

Since the project is not yet finished, I have no concrete results yet. However, as I go, I am compiling a database of every usage of the organ, who played, and on what instrument. Once I have all the data, I will then look through for various trends in organ usage and compile a paper stating my results. This project has already proved itself both interesting and meaningful and I hope that my experience encourages others to take advantage of resources available to them.