Edwin lemare biography

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Copyright Zarex Corp. In addition to orchestral and operatic works, Lemare transcribed a great deal of familiar folk songs and other tunes for the organ. Lemare received a share of the royalties after threatening legal action. The stock market crash and ensuing depression had wiped out his entire life savings, leaving him penniless with no inheritance.
            The world’s most popular organist died virtually forgotten.

An organ recital was inexpensive because there was only one performer to pay, rather than a large symphony.

The advent of higher-fidelity recordings somewhat obviated the need, in the public’s mind, for municipal organists and orchestral transcriptions. Transcription as the Performer’s Strategic Tool: The Case of Edwin Lemare and the Organ. http://www.hillwoodrecordings.com/OCA32001Feature6.html
Whitney, Craig R.

All the Stops: The Glorious Pipe Organ and Its American Masters. Usually he would do his improvisations near the end, keeping the audience’s attention from fading.
Transcriptions were possibly the most important part of Lemare’s repertoire, with good reason. He filed for divorce that year; this had a mild effect on his career, but he quickly rebounded.

This aspect of tailoring a performance to please the masses in this way has been lacking during the last 40 years because the purist academia started to look down upon such practices; consequently, recital attendance is next to nil in many places.
First, his technical genius and ability amazed people. Many of the young Lemare's relatives were organists, so this might have had some effect on his musical inclinations.
Lemare started composing piano music at age five, and by age six had played his first recital.

He played the organ at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1902-15), gave recitals at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, California, in 1915, and was municipal organist in San Francisco (1917-21) and Portland, Maine (1921).

Sources:
Colles, Volume II, p. ACCHOS website.

Thumbing is a technique that allows a player to play a melody line and accompaniment simultaneously on two manuals, with just one hand. Due to the ongoing war, sea travel was limited, making Lemare late for his most important booking yet: San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
            On Feb.

21, 1915, the Exposition opened in San Francisco featuring, among other things, a large Austin pipe organ in 4000-seat Festival Hall. Performance Online.
Lemare saw the organ, especially the modern designs being built, as the perfect tool for the masses to hear the latest orchestral works, as well as the literature.