40 Year Celebration

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music is an interdisciplinary graduate center for the study and practice of sacred music, worship, and the related arts. Founded with a core focus on the Christian tradition of sacred music, the Institute also seeks to engage with other forms of sacred art and other religious traditions.

The Institute’s primary mission is to music students whose vocation is to conduct, play, and sing for the worshiping assembly, and who have keen interest in the religious and theological contexts of the sacred music they perform. Likewise, the Institute trains divinity students preparing for leadership roles in the churches, whether as lay people, as ordained clergy, or as scholars developing specialties in liturgical studies and in religion and the arts. As an independently endowed entity at Yale University, the Institute of Sacred Music provides generous financial support for those talented students who believe in the importance of interactive training for church musicians and clergy, a training that fosters mutual respect and common understanding. David, if one stretches him a bit, stands for the many activities supported at Yale through the Institute.

Through its mission to church musicians, the training for ministry, and the lives of the churches, the Institute has a unique position, not only at Yale, but in this country and in the world at large. At Yale, we link the resources of two extraordinary professional schools, the Yale School of Music and the Yale Divinity School. Institute students receive degrees in one or the other of these schools, and, if they elect to do so, joint degrees from both. The certificate additionally received from the Institute signifies that students have gained more than the training either school alone can offer. Students acquire a sense of the partnerships within and between churches, and a working knowledge of the changing synthesis of music, text, ceremony, and liturgical space, which has taken place in the assemblies of all faiths and denominations since their beginnings. Decades later, the Institute occupies its present position because so many people understood the importance of a shared process of formation for ministers and musicians.

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music is unique in all the world because of circumstances that led to its founding, because of the broad mission set out by its benefactors, and because of its home within one of the world’s great research universities.

The founding personnel of the ISM migrated to Yale from the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, a preeminent American ecumenical seminary. Begun in 1928, the School was the idea of UTS president Henry Sloane Coffin and Drs. Clarence and Helen Dickinson, in order to offer the highest caliber of training to church musicians within the context of a theological school. Clarence Dickinson was its first director, followed by Hugh Porter in 1945, and in turn succeeded by Robert S. Baker in 1962.

In many ways, the School of Sacred Music at UTS was a natural consequence of the revival of sacred music that had swept through nineteenth-century Europe through the Oxford and Ecclesiological Movements, the chant revival at Solesmes, and the Cecilian movement in central and southern Europe. Students in the School numbered, on average, about 60 at any one time and received rigorous training in organ and service playing, choral conducting, singing, and composition. Their academic work included music history, liturgical studies, and theology. Graduates of the program went on to teach and to lead music in some of the great cathedrals and churches throughout North America and beyond, instilling a new appreciation for the classic repertoire of hymnody, chant, and choral music as situated in historic rites and architectural environments.

However, this noble enterprise was not to survive the turmoil of the late 1960’s. By 1970 Union Seminary was in financial crisis, and in 1972, the School was closed.  Undaunted, Robert Baker applied for a major grant from the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller foundation of Columbus, Indiana. This family foundation was led by Clementine Miller Tangeman (whose late husband had taught music history for years at Union), and by her brother, J. Irwin Miller, then on the corporation of Yale University. They were both leaders in the Disciples of Christ church, having supported seminary and musical education in the denomination for years. They had long contemplated beginning a venture at Yale similar to the Union School, and so in May, 1973, they awarded a grant of $10 million to Yale University to establish an Institute of Sacred Music here.

In the grant letter to the university, they wrote: “First, out of what context does our interest in an Institute of Worship, Music, and the Related Arts arise?  It rises out of our concern for the needs of the spirit among people living today; out of our own Christian convictions; and out of our belief in the importance of the arts (especially music) as valid and compelling means of transmitting to men and women the essence of the Christian Gospel.” They hoped for fruitful partnerships with Yale’s Divinity School and School of Music to be sure, and also with Yale College, the Graduate School, the Schools of Art, Architecture, the Chaplain’s office, and the museums –  indeed, with the whole university.

Robert Stevens Baker became the first director of the Institute and had the daunting task of establishing the ISM at Yale. He was joined by three colleagues from Union: Richard French (music history), Jeffery Rowthorn (worship), and Mina Belle Packer Wichmann (administrator). Mina Belle Wichmann recalls, “By September 1974 we had produced a curriculum, restructured the former gym at YDS to include classrooms, office space, and practice rooms; purchased several Steinway grand pianos, contracted for four studio and practice pipe organs; advertised for students, and accepted ten graduate applicants for YSM & YDS (five each), who shared our visions for this new enterprise – the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.”

Upon Baker’s retirement in 1976, the conductor Jon Bailey was director from 1976 to 1982 and continued the initial trajectory of making the ISM one of the premier centers for the study of church music and worship. The student body and faculty, which grew steadily during this period, increased energy and quality in sacred music performance around Yale and especially in Yale’s chapels, and graduates from this period still hold major posts in the church and academy today.

John Cook was named director in 1984 (after an interregnum of two years). Already on the Yale Divinity School faculty, he added the existing religion and arts program to the Institute’s portfolio. The Yale Camerata was formed in 1985. A redesign of the Institute’s curriculum led to even more integrated learning among the students, and a dual degree program was introduced allowing students to pursue both a divinity and a music degree together. Capturing major grants from the Lilly and Luce Foundations, the Institute led the way in making the arts an integral part of theological education. International conferences were convened around broad themes such as “Jerusalem,” “Imagining Mortality,” and “Utopia.” Cook’s famous study trips abroad were built upon, and are still part of the Institute’s offerings today.

When John Cook was recruited to be president of the Luce Foundation in 1992, the university searched for his replacement for two years. These were indeed transition years for Yale, as President Benno Schmidt also stepped down from office in 1992. Then Richard Levin, one year into his presidency, appointed the charismatic medieval music historian Margot Fassler, who held the ISM director post through 2004.

The student body increased again during this period from 40 to its current 65. The public programming of the Institute flourished mightily and continues to include literary readings, art exhibitions, lecture series, and conferences on various topics, as well as musical performances. The Institute began appointing a fellow in ethnomusicology each year. The worship program in Marquand chapel blossomed in new and innovative ways, and this in turn energized other campus ministries at Yale. In 2003, the Yale Schola Cantorum was founded along with a new program for vocal graduate majors in 2004. When Margot Fassler stepped down as director, Levin wrote: “Margot was one of my first senior administrative appointees and one of the most successful.  Her ten years of service to the Institute have been nothing less than spectacular.”

When Martin Jean (the author of this article) moved into the director’s role in 2005, it was natural to keep on this energetic trajectory. The faculty renewed their focus on an integrated curriculum and formalized a course of studies in church music. Two new faculty lines in religion and the arts were added, and the single fellowship in ethnomusicology was expanded to six fellowships spanning all the Institute’s disciplines, to engage potentially with any religious tradition through the breadth of the Institute’s mission. Expanded outreach through exhibitions, special guest artists, scholarly gatherings, and summer offerings put even more people in touch with the Institute’s work, and through Schola tours and study trips, Institute faculty and students have traveled to over a dozen countries on three continents.

In forty years, the work of the Institute has expanded and become ever more complex. However, through all of this change and growth, we hold dear the core concern for the work of religious communities in today’s world. We give thanks for the vision and gift that created the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and we pray that our programs in music, worship, and the arts continue to serve the public in innovative and continually evolving ways.

Timothy Dwight’s Yale was, as Yale had been since 1701, a school for the training of Christian ministers. President from 1795 until 1817, Dwight was a patriot who had been the chaplain of General Putnam’s camp, a place commemorated more than one hundred years later in Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England. 

Timothy Dwight believed that as much of the education of ministers took place in the chapel as in the classroom: his interest in sacred music was powerful (as was his voice), and he edited a collection of Watt’s psalms for the Connecticut Congregational churches, appending a collection of 264 hymn texts, an unheard-of number, in a service book for that denomination. He was an outstanding preacher and wrote a book of sermons, designed for use over the course of two years, for the Yale chapel. Perhaps he would have agreed with Thomas Troeger that the singing of hymns is one of the best ways to “knock loose the debris of verbosity that often clogs a preacher’s spiritual springs.”

The education of all undergraduates in Yale College continued to be shaped throughout the nineteenth century by the practices of earlier times: daily chapel services were mandatory, as was the Sunday service, which slowly decreased from the six or seven hours in Timothy Dwight’s time. Singing of hymns by all, and of anthems by a student choir, was regular practice, although the organ was forbidden until mid-century. In Gustave Stoeckel (1819–1907), who had been a church musician in his native Germany, Yale acquired an energetic organist, choirmaster, and leader of the Beethoven Glee Club, the forerunner of Yale’s famed singing association. Stoeckel taught both in the College and in Yale Divinity School. He secured the funding for Yale’s Department of Music, founded in 1890, and served as the first Battell Professor of Music. Formal study of music at Yale, which eventually led to the foundation of the Yale School of Music as a professional graduate school, and the continuation of the Department of Music within Arts and Sciences, entered Yale through the door of the chapel.

Prior to the turn of the last century, in the very year that Gustave Stoeckel’s name no longer appeared on the faculty list of the Divinity School, a church musician named John Griggs gave a series of ten lectures at the Divinity School, accompanied by the undergraduate Charles Ives. The Divinity School hired musicians to teach its students, while Horatio Parker and other teachers in the Department of Music taught some of their courses with divinity students in mind. Hymn playing and singing remained a part of the Divinity School curriculum, with Henry Hallam Tweedy, professor of homiletics and an accomplished musician, as instructor in this subject. He was also the resident liturgiologist, and took professional interest in the history of Christian architecture. Tweedy’s role in instructing Divinity School students in liturgy, music, and the arts was part of a long tradition, to which the teaching of his contemporary, Charles Allen Dinsmore, who taught courses in religion and literature, also belonged.

Union Theological Seminary in New York City, like the Yale Divinity School, had a long tradition of offering musical instruction to its students. Three seminal figures, Henry Sloane Coffin, Union president from 1926 to 1945, Clarence Dickinson, who became professor of church music at Union in 1912, and his wife, Helen Snyder Dickinson, established the School of Sacred Music at Union in 1928. The impact that the graduates of the School had upon American musical and religious life during the middle decades of the last century would be difficult to overestimate. Clarence Dickinson taught both organ and composition, and published collections of music and textbooks; Helen Dickinson taught liturgy, and used the slide collections of New York libraries and museums to show her students how liturgy and architecture worked together in the Christian tradition and in other faiths as well.

Graduates of the School of Sacred Music received the finest professional musical training available, with the musical riches of the city at their feet. The Dickinsons insisted that their students know and respect Western European art and music, and also the best of familiar church music traditions: the hymns, anthems, and monophonic chant repertories. In addition, musicians were taught the foundations of liturgical history and were required to take a small number of courses in the seminary. Seminary students simultaneously encountered music students through social interaction, in their classes and when performing at common worship services. Church musicians and ministers—lifelong career partners—learned at Union how to understand each other better. In 1945 Hugh Porter became director of the School of Sacred Music; he was succeeded in 1960 by the distinguished organist Robert Baker, who also became the school’s first dean in 1962-63.

Their successful experiment in sacred music at Union did not survive the political turmoil of the late 1960s: funding was withdrawn in the early 1970s and the School was closed. Shortly thereafter, in 1973, Professor Baker, together with the music historian Richard French, the seminary chaplain Jeffery Rowthorn, and the administrator Mina Belle Packer, migrated to Yale University to begin a similar venture: the Institute of Sacred Music. The new entity was endowed by Clementine Miller Tangeman, whose husband Robert had been professor of music history at Union before his untimely death in 1964, and by her brother, J. Irwin Miller, a Yale graduate, musician, and patron of the arts. Yale, the leading research university in the Northeast with professional schools of both music and divinity, seemed the ideal place to re-create the concepts and visions of the School of Sacred Music. Yale’s president Kingman Brewster worked with Colin Williams, Dean of the Divinity School, and with the dean of the School of Music, Philip Nelson, to realize that ideal, and in 1974 the Institute’s first students were admitted to Yale.

The Directors of the Institute

This has been an extraordinary 40th anniversary year for the Institute of Sacred Music, culminating in a month-long celebration of performances, exhibitions, lectures, and more. 

At Yale, we have been privileged that ISM, a place where individuals engage in the interdisciplinary study of sacred music, worship, and the related arts, is an integral part of the university. The Institute includes a faculty that is dedicated and dynamic in their work and mission. We are fortunate to embrace the passion of everyone who is involved with ISM, and I am especially pleased to offer my congratulations and best wishes in this anniversary year. 

Peter Salovey
President, Yale University
Chris Argyis Professor of Psychology

For four decades, the School of Music and The Institute of Sacred Music have been engaged in a vibrant partnership.  With artistic and academic excellence as core values,  we have embraced the visionary ideals and values of the Institute’s founders.  Today the organ, choral, and vocal programs at ISM are among the  best in the nation.  Indeed, the founders would share our joy and pride!

We extend our heartiest congratulations to all those, past and present, who have guided, shaped and sustained the Institute in its evolution.  We celebrate the accomplishments of the previous years and anticipate the future leadership of ISM in the interdisciplinary endeavors of sacred music, worship, and the related arts.

Robert L. Blocker
The Henry & Lucy Moses Dean of the Yale School of Music

The ISM is a unique institution that brings arts and the sacred to Yale. From Plato to Hans Urs von Balthasar, aesthetics has been an important dimension of philosophical and theological reflection. ISM brings aesthetics to expression through worship, literature, music, and the visual arts. From the daily music in Marquand Chapel, the routine art exhibits and concerts to the superb faculty and students, ISM enriches life on the Sterling Quad and at Yale University immensely. I would not want to imagine Yale Divinity School without ISM. Congratulations on 40 great years. Ad multos annos.

Gregory E. Sterling
The Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean, the Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament
Yale Divinity School

I am so grateful for my time at the ISM. Supplementing the musical stimulation of studying with Tom Murray and singing for Maggie Brooks and Blake Stern, John Cook’s year-long survey of the history of Christianity and the Arts has enriched my subsequent life more than any academic course I ever took. To live and study in such a creative, interdisciplinary atmosphere for two years was life-changing.

Dale Adelmann
Canon for Music, the Cathedral of Saint Philip, Atlanta
Friend of the Institute

Since the ISM is one of those enterprises that was so obviously needed in the current academic and ecclesiastical climate, it is a wonder that it was not set up earlier, and that there are so few comparable ventures elsewhere.  From its early days it has been brilliantly led, and deserves to flourish tenfold in the decades to come.  I wish it nothing but success!

Jeremy Begbie
Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology, Duke University

My first musical experience as Music Director of the New Haven Symphony was working with the Institute of Sacred Music on a performance of Durufé’s glorious Requiem. The quality of the musicianship by both professors and students was of the highest standard - a real delight and privilege to encounter upon my arrival in the US. Since then I have attended many of their performances which are always an inspiration. The Institute plays a vitally important role in the development of church musicians for the benefit of the nation’s communities. Happy Anniversary.

William Boughton
Music director, New Haven Symphony Orchestra

Happy Birthday, ISM! Like all scholars working in the field between music and religion, I am so glad you exist. Your faculty are doing excellent work. I have been gratified to give a seminar on the religious symbolism in Olivier Messiaen’s Aquinas-based works in the year of the composer’s centenary and to participate in a fruitful consultation on the contemporary issues in theology and music. Both have stimulated myriad new thoughts, for which I am very grateful.

Siglind Bruhn
Life research associate, music and modern literatures, Institute for the Humanities
University of Michigan

Not only is the ISM Fellows program the only institution of its kind in the world; the deliberate combination of theory and practice, study and performance of liturgy, music and related arts creates a uniquely stimulating setting for research that is inspired by both excellent academic resources and the liturgical experience of a lively community. Ad multos annos!

Harald Buchinger
University of Regensburg (Germany)

As one who savors the vertiginous occasions of words, as one who savors, as well, the elations of the musical phrase and the provocations availed by intervals of stillness, I am especially grateful for a home where poetry and sacred music abide together in common.  I am grateful, moreover, for your continuing hospitality.

Scott Cairns
Poet

The Institute was the perfect exhibition home for The ERUV project, a non-ideological, interpretive exploration of a concept with mapping applications in the contemporary world. This is, as I know it, the Institute: the  intersection of idea and site.

Alan Cohen
Photographer

Congratulations on this your 40th Anniversary! May you continue to provide for the world the model for excellence in sacred music!

Melva Wilson Costen
Helmar Emil Nielsen Music and Worship Professor Emerita
Interdenominational Theological Center

Though familiar with ISM for many years, my first immersive experience was when I read in the Literature & Spirituality series in January 2013, an event that set the gold standard for how to host a poetry reading. I suspect that were I to attend other ISM events I would find as much attention to detail and honor for the arts as I was delighted to experience.

Brad Davis
Poet

In 2013 the ISM gallery hosted the exhibition Respeto/Respect, photographs by seven Maya women photographers in Chiapas, about the importance of respect for religious differences. The gallery provided an excellent opportunity to prompt thought about respect, not just tolerance, for differences of whatever type.

Carlota Duarte
Founder/director, The Chiapas Photography Project

Felicitations on your 40th anniversary!  It has been a delight to observe the growth and evolution of the Institute since its inception thanks to the vision and passion of Clementine Tangeman.  It has been a personal pleasure to be related to the Institute especially more recently as a contributing visitor to the Institute.  Over these years I have been heartened by the vitality and energy of the place, the high quality of faculty and students and the commitment to explore the diverse and complex theology and practice of music and the arts as they serve as servants to the worship life of the Church. Your work remains a significant and needed influence for the many of us “out here,” refreshed and inspired by the vision of the Institute and the contributions of its graduates.

John Ferguson
Elliot and Klara Stockdal Johnson Professor of Organ
Church Music and Cantor to the Student Congregation
St. Olaf College (MN)

Wishing you many more decades of sustained scholarly and practical engagement with the treasury of sacred music.

William Flynn
Lecturer in medieval Latin
Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds (UK)

Congratulations to the Institute of Sacred Music for your 40th anniversary.  As a visual artist participant, I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate and to seek the “still point of the turning world” (T.S. Eliot) with you.  We live in a fragmented world and academic disciplines, and ISM offers a point of intersection, a refuge of integration to us all.  Thank you!

Makoto Fujimura
Artist, Fujimura Institute

Congratulations!  I am a great admirer of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and I hope the program will continue for another 40 years and beyond! I have many dear friends and colleagues whose lives have been changed by their experience in the program, and I have met many audience members who have been touched by the work of ISM alumni.  Music is an incredible art form with the power to move and influence people towards joy, love, and peace. Thank you for all you do to serve that mission in the world!

Jolle Greenleaf
Artistic director, TENET

Yale ISM excels in interconnecting sacred music, liturgical studies, sacred art and architecture, literature, and other arts. It does so in an ecumenical way, paying attention to both Western and Eastern Christian traditions. At the same time, it is open-minded to other (non-Christian) religions and to other (non-Western) cultures. It is characterized by mutual fertilization between theory and practice, as well as between theology, musicology, and other branches of scholarship. I feel privileged that I have been a member of this community and I continue to feel close to it. Thanks ISM! Congratulations, and keep on trucking!

Bert Groen
Professor, Center for Southeast European Studies
University of Graz (Austria)

Turning 40, eh? Congratulations. Well, I don’t know. Is that the right response to not being very young but also not being very old? From where I sit, it looks like you’ve hit your stride. I’m impressed that your belt line hasn’t expanded too much. I notice that your feet still reach the ground as you stretch toward the sky. You still exercise, taking little for granted, and your heart is still good. You’re not courting early death. But you know, right, that the going gets harder, not easier from here on? You’ll be tempted to become ever more cautious. Resist that temptation. Dare to become 80!

Ronald Grimes
Visiting professor of ritual studies, University of Prague

The Yale ISM has been significantly fruitful for artists and for the general public as well. International artists and students meet and learn from each other at the Institute, enabling them to break through cultural barriers, and to recognize the richness and variety of the arts and culture of so many countries around the world.  I hope the ISM will create many more opportunities for international artistic collaborations, which enable people to discover the ‘golden thread’ among various cultures and unites those of different backgrounds by means of art and culture.

Didik Hadiprayitno (Didik Nini Thowok)
Choreographer, dancer, traditional cross gender artist (Indonesia)

Working at the ISM with Schola Cantorum and with the conducting and singing programs was an eye opener for me! To see such  well-structured courses and such inspiring and rigorous teaching in action made me realize what is possible for us mere mortals elsewhere - if only we could persuade related disciplines to collaborate, as you do. Thank you for inspiring me. Very best wishes for your important anniversary and may you all continue to flourish!

Simon Halsey
Chief conductor, Berlin Radio Choir
Head of choral education, Berliner Philharmoniker
Choral director, London Symphony Orchestra

Yale’s ISM provided a needed forum for me as an exhibiting artist earlier in my career––and now decades later for my nationally touring collaborative work, QU4RTETS. I found at ISM high-level discourse, professional and academically rigorous discussion of my work, and a deep sense of intellectual hospitality. Additionally, I sensed the gravitas of authentic engagement with tradition and innovation––with a unique blend of mind, spirit, and heart that is rare in academe these days.

Bruce Herman
Artist and Lothlorien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts, Gordon College

The very idea is stirring: a center for sacred music with its own schola cantorum! How I wish time and circumstances had permitted me greater contact with the whole thing. As it is, from my short visit as artist in residence, I treasure warm memories of an outstanding group of singers, surrounded and nurtured by brilliant faculty and mouth-watering resources. May you move forward from innovative achievement to yet more innovative achievement!

Paul Hillier
Conductor

In 1974, Christian worship was beginning a new era. From the exploration of contemporary and charismatic approaches to the growing energy of the ecumenical liturgical movement, worship options and values had changed in the previous two decades. Now four decades later, the Institute of Sacred Music and its attention to worship and the arts has led the way through ever challenging choices, having an impact on the academy and the church alike. We in this world are in your debt.

Todd E. Johnson
Theological director, Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts
Fuller Theological Seminary

Many congratulations to the Institute of Sacred Music, its directors, faculty, alums, and current students on four decades of providing leadership in the field of sacred music studies. I have had the honor of working with many graduates of this fine institution, and I continue to cherish a close relationship through its magnificent Schola Cantorum; long may it flourish!

Edward Elwyn Jones
Gund University Organist and Choirmaster, Harvard University

The Institute of Sacred Music is to be commended for extraordinary and outstanding leadership to shape the next generation of musicians, artists and clergy dedicated to the worship arts.  The unique partnership that the Institute offers, led by excellent  and distinguished faculty and visiting artists, provides a rich and fertile  environment for musicians, scholars , and artists to flourish. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success.

Grete Krogh
Professor, Royal Danish Conservatory of Music, Copenhagen (Denmark)

There is nothing in the world quite like the ISM.  Marked by a vigorous academic and artistic rigor, the faculty and students of the Institute are also marked by a gracious spirit of cooperation and care.  They are immersed in one of the finest universities of our time, but they are also immersed in genuine concern for the well-being of actual religious communities. Congratulations on this anniversary!  May there be many more years.

Gordon W. Lathrop
Past president, Societas Liturgica

Congratulations and happy 40th anniversary to the Yale Institute of Sacred Music! I keep such a fond memory of my visit to Yale a few years ago, as a guest artist, and of the impression I felt at the very first contact with faculty and students! An impression of inspiring and stimulating atmosphere in a warm and convivial environnement. Its yearning for excellence succeeded in such results showed through all the brilliant careers this institute produced! We can’t but wish a perfect continuity in this leading and successful institution, looking forward to the next decade for the celebrations of the 50th!!! Warmest regards to the faculty and students!

Rachel Laurin
Organist and composer

Congratulations to the Yale Institute of Sacred Music on forty years of training and inspiring young  artists to understand and share the treasures of our sacred choral music heritage, that vital and living tradition which contains so many profound outpourings of the human spirit. May your work continue to bring beauty and joy to our world for decades to come.

Andrew Megill
Associate professor, Westminster Choir College

Congratulations; you’ve got a good thing going and, unlike the Children of Israel, you did not have to wander for forty years in the wilderness!  I wish you and “the team” all the best.

Martin E. Marty
Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

Congratulations to the ISM upon reaching a milestone worthy of such celebration! May the prayer and work, historical inquiry and constructive scholarship, artistry and pedagogy, theory and practice, performances and publications that have altogether benefited academy, church, and society continue for years to come.

Bruce T. Morrill, S.J.
Edward A. Malloy Professor of Catholic Studies
Vanderbilt University

I am delighted to send a message of congratulations and best wishes to the Yale Institute of Sacred Music on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. In 2010 I had the privilege and pleasure of working with the excellent Schola Cantorum, and participating in the life and work of the ISM for several weeks.  I was inspired and refreshed by the vibrant, multi-disciplinary work and activity of the Institute, both scholarly and practical, across a wide range of musical and theological fields. Long may this unique venture continue to thrive!

James O’Donnell
Organist and master of the choristers, Westminster Abbey (UK)

It has been a truly great honor for me to be invited by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Coming from the “old world” tradition, it has been a wonderful challenge for me to exchange ideas as guest teacher at this internationally honored institution. My already high expectations were exceeded by far, and it has been a delight to work with such committed, open-minded people whose enthusiasm allows them to be swept up by great music. For the future I wish you further success and that you maintain this special nourishing atmosphere that sends out so many inspiring musicians to the world.

Erwin Ortner
Founder and artistic director, Arnold Schoenberg Choir

I have been involved on many occasions from the founding to the present, and always been delighted with the people and work at the Institute of Sacred Music.  It is unique in its dedication to the highest quality of music performance in relation to everyday worship in our churches.  Long may it flourish!

Alice Parker
Artistic director, Melodious Accord

How can one – in a few short sentences only – fully give credit to the priceless work that is being done at the ISM and the invaluable results that come out of it? Having had the privilege to meet with students and fellow teachers at the ISM on many occasions, my admiration for the activities being implemented grow bigger for each time, and my respect gets more and more sincere each time I meet with colleagues - originally students at the ISM – now in important positions around in the musical world.

Stefan Parkman
Professor and director Cantorum
Uppsala University (Sweden)

Over these past forty years Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music has made an invaluable contribution to the renewal of life and worship in the churches of North America and beyond.  It has served as that “sacred bridge,” connecting people of diverse cultures and faith traditions in the formation of artists and musicians, church leaders and liturgical scholars for the 21st century.  May it continue to flourish for many years to come.

Keith F. Pecklers, S.J.
Professor of Liturgy, Pontifical Gregorian University
Professor of Liturgical History, Pontifical Liturgical Institute (Rome)

We visited the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in 2008. We consider that the Institute makes the greatest contribution to studying, support and development of a sacred music. Excellent concert halls at the Institute, perfectly made concert programs and selection of performers give the chance to take pleasure on the present in a sacred music of different styles and eras. We congratulate the Institute on the 40th  anniversary and we wish successful continuation of its important activities

Valery Petrov
Artistic director and conductor, The Orthodox Singers

I wish the Yale ISM all the very best for their 40th anniversary. The Tallis Scholars reached this landmark last year, so I know what it feels like: a lot of history and a lot of opportunity. I hope you will build on what you have achieved, helping to make sacred music a normal part of the secular concert scene.

Peter Phillips
Director, the Tallis Scholars

Accept my cordial congratulations to Yale ISM 40th Anniversary! I have wonderful memories of rewarding cooperations, motivated students and great colleagues.

Helmuth Rilling
Conductor

I spent two rewarding weeks in March 2012 working with the Schola Cantorum. I have rarely come across a group with greater commitment, eager to tackle demanding repertoire but also keen to appreciate the nuances of Anglican Psalm singing. Universities in the UK could well learn from the way in which Yale has integrated liturgical singing into an academic programme.  The Institute of Sacred Music is clearly an inspirational department. May it continue to flourish.

Christopher Robinson
Organist and conductor, St. John’s College, Cambridge (UK)

Sending best wishes on this celebratory anniversary with sincere appreciation for the generous support of the visual arts by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

Ellen Rothenberg
Artist

Many congratulations to the ISM on the occasion of your fortieth anniversary. We have greatly enjoyed our performances at Marquand Chapel; it is thrilling and challenging in equal measure to sing to such a knowledgable audience, and to meet students so enthused by and responsive to the repertoire we love.  We wish you the very best for the next forty years and beyond.

Stile Antico
Early music vocal ensemble

When I arrived at Yale to give a master class for art song at the ISM, I was delighted to discover that the faculty and students treated secular music with such “reverence.” It was a joy to work with the vocalists, since their enthusiasm for the repertoire could only be described as limitless. The subtle beauty of art song seemed to be second nature to them and I left Yale feeling deeply satisfied that my passion for the art of song had been fully understood and deeply appreciated.

Donald Sulzen
Department head of song interpretation
University of Music and the Performing Arts, Munich (Germany)

Out of all my teaching assignments, the weeks I have spent in Yale as visiting organ tutor have been the most enjoyable and rewarding. With wonderful instruments, dedicated students and inspiring leadership (as well as some great restaurants nearby!) the ISM has an organ department to be truly proud of. Long may it continue to thrive.

Thomas Trotter
City Organist, Birmingham (UK)

Congratulations! I appreciate greatly that the ISM witnesses to the glory of God and encourages artists–especially for my exhibition in 2009 and the concert in 2012 to benefit the people in my home town Ishinomaki and in Sendai, which suffered from the big earthquake and tsunami. I pray the ISM  would continue to fill deeply the role of delivering God’s grace through music and art as “earthen vessels” described by Paul.

Soichi Watanabe
Artist

Prompted by the 400th anniversary of the composer’s death, your presentation of the TENET ensemble from New York in a performance of a set of Holy Week responses by Carlo Gesualdo is an event that I shall always remember.

Glenn Watkins
Professor emeritus, University of Michigan

During visits to Yale as artist-in-residence I have been able to observe the superb work done by the Institute.    My admiration could not be higher for the seriousness of its aims and objectives, the extremely high standard of the work, the range of the curriculum, and the fraternal atmosphere among the students. I congratulate you on this landmark anniversary and offer warmest good wishes for an equally illustrious future.

Dame Gillian Weir
Organist