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Introduction to ISM

The Institute of Sacred Music Today

The Institute has grown from a group of three faculty and seven students in the first graduating class to twenty-three resident and visiting faculty who teach throughout the University, and sixty-seven students. The ISM maintains administrative and teaching space in the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. ISM students and faculty are jointly admitted or appointed to either the School of Music or Divinity School or both.

The Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale School of Music

Joining forces with the considerable resources of the School of Music, the ISM trains musicians for careers in church music, performance, and teaching. Students majoring in organ, choral conducting, and voice will go on to careers in churches and schools, playing or conducting ensembles there or on the concert stage. Some students elect the specialized track in church music studies in order to study liturgy, Bible, and theology along with the more standard music curriculum.

All ISM music students receive a broad musical education equal to that of any YSM student, but they are also trained with an eye toward understanding the religious and liturgical roots of the music they perform. The young composer with a serious interest in writing sacred music and music for specific liturgical traditions is also occasionally admitted to the Institute. Six concert and liturgical choirs (Yale Camerata, Schola Cantorum, Recital Chorus, Repertory Chorus, Marquand Choir, and Marquand Gospel Choir) have their home in the Institute, and count many Institute students

among their members.

Institute faculty and students concentrate on the music of the churches through performance and through repertorial, analytical, and historical studies. As both performers and scholars, our faculty and students form a bridge between the School of Music and the Department of Music and are committed to demonstrating the connection of music with culture, liturgy, and religious thought. The repertories studied are of two broad types: (1) cantatorial and congregational song; and (2) Western art-music, including masses, motets, oratorios, art songs, and vocal chamber music; and organ repertory in all styles and from all periods. The Institute also encourages serious study of music from other faiths and non-Western traditions.

At a time when the state of music in churches and synagogues pleads for various kinds of well-informed change, it is crucial that talented students who have vocations in sacred music be prepared for challenges both musical and theological. These students must have the finest musical training; they must also argue persuasively for music of authority, knowing enough of liturgical and church history, and of theology, to do so. Thus, although the Institute’s choral conducting, organ performance, and voice performance majors are fully enrolled in the School of Music, they are encouraged to elect courses in liturgics, theology, biblical study, and religion and the arts.

In its broadest sense, the Institute of Sacred Music’s presence at the heart of a major school of music is a reminder that secular repertories—from madrigals and opera to chamber music and symphonies—were brought to their first heights by musicians trained in the churches, and that composers make frequent and conscious returns to the traditions of liturgical music. Mendelssohn’s resurrection of Bach’s choral works, Brahms’s patient studies and editions of medieval and Renaissance repertories, Stravinsky’s use of Russian Orthodox chant in his Mass, and Ives’s deeply religious "secular" works all reclaim the musical materials of congregational song. The Institute thus upholds the importance of the churches and religious institutions for the teaching and preservation of great musical repertories, whether simple or complicated, music of the past or contemporary compositions, the concert mass, fugue, hymn tune, or psalm setting.

The Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale Divinity School

As the direct descendant of the School of Sacred Music at Union Seminary, the Institute is deeply committed to its affiliation with the Yale Divinity School. Institute faculty affiliated with the Divinity School are concerned with the history and present life of the churches, and especially with worshiping congregations in a broad spectrum of Western Christian denominations, as well as Judaism and Eastern Christianity. The program in liturgical studies at the Institute and Divinity School has faculty who are historians of liturgical texts, music, and ceremony, but who are also keenly interested in and knowledgeable about the worship of the contemporary churches. The student who studies religion and the arts at the ISM has access to faculty and courses in the history of the visual, literary, and musical arts. Students at the Divinity School can matriculate through the Institute with concentrations in either of these two programs.

Institute/Divinity faculty focus on four broad subject areas: the Bible in liturgy and religious art; hymnology; the history of Christian denominations; and theology, politics, and the arts. These subject areas intersect with and augment the work of colleagues in other disciplines at the Divinity School. Thus, students at the Institute learn through programs at the Divinity School how canonical texts have gone forth to the assembly, and how, from patristic times to the present, these texts have been learned and reinterpreted by the worshiping community. Classes at the Divinity School in liturgical subjects, including music history, religious poetry and drama, iconography, and architectural history, stress encounters with primary source materials, manuscript and archival study, as well as trips to museums, galleries, and architectural sites. All are possible through Yale’s great libraries and collections, the many historic churches in the region, and New Haven’s proximity to New York City.

Students at the Institute may also participate in daily worship in Marquand Chapel. The chapel program is a partnership of Yale Divinity School and the Institute under the direction of two faculty members – Siobhán Garrigan, the assistant dean for chapel, and Patrick Evans, director of chapel music. It is rich in variety, and the ecumenical nature of the Institute and Divinity School is expressed in the leadership and content of the services. In keeping with the esteemed heritage of preaching at Yale and the Divinity School, sermons are offered twice a week by faculty, students, staff, and invited guests from beyond campus. On other days the rich symbolic, artistic, and musical possibilities of the Christian tradition are explored and developed. The assembly’s song is supported by the Marquand Chapel Choir, the Marquand Gospel Choir (both groups supported by the Institute), two a cappella groups, the Faculty Singers, many and various soloists, and occasional ensembles. Many avenues for musical leadership are open to the student body by volunteering, as are many avenues of leadership through the spoken word.

The Common Experience

Students at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and either professional school, Music or Divinity, have many unparalleled opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange: through Colloquium, in which all Institute students enroll, through courses taught by Institute faculty, and through other offerings including biannual faculty-led study tours open to all Institute students. In 2006 the Institute traveled to Mexico; in 2008 the destination will be Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia.. The tours offer participants excursions and rich possibilities to see, hear, and learn in the primary areas of the ISM – sacred music, worship and the arts. The ISM covers most expenses of the tours for its students.

Performances and Special Events

As an interdisciplinary center and major arts presenter in New Haven, the Institute offers a full schedule of concerts (some featuring Yale faculty and guest performers), drama, art exhibitions, films, literary readings, lectures, and multi-media events during the year. In 2006-2007, the Institute sponsored 78 events open to the public (including 43 student recitals), which were attended by an estimated 18,000 people.

Lectures Sponsored by the Institute

The Institute sponsors two annual lectures. The Tangeman Lecture is named for Robert Stone Tangeman, Professor of Musicology at Union Theological Seminary, in whose name the Institute's founding benefactor endowed the Institute at Yale. Recent Tangeman lecturers include the philosopher Christopher Dustin, the musicologist Markus Rathey, Daniel Melamed, Mervyn Cooke, and (in 2008) Peter Mercer-Taylor. The Kavanagh Lecture, named for the late Professor Emeritus of Liturgics Aidan Kavanagh, is given in conjunction withe Convocation Week at Yale Divinity School. Lecturers in this series include John Baldovin, Paul Bradshaw, Ronald Grimes, Lawrence Hoffman, Janet Walton, Maxwell Johnson, Jeffrey Hamburger, and (in fall 2007) Nathan D. Mitchell.

International Activities and International Representation in the Yale Institute of Sacred Music

The ISM draws its students and faculty from all over the world. Currently, about 14% of students come from outside the United States, as do six faculty members.

Faculty and students at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music work together to create a vital network of international exchange between performing musicians and scholars in liturgical studies and religion and the arts. The ISM's Colloquium series has engaged broad themes of enculturation, and the liturgical and musical heritage and contemporary practice worldwide.

The Institute has a tradition of sponsoring, sometimes in collaboration with other entities, musicians, artists, and scholars from around the world to perform, exhibit, and lecture at Yale; the Tuks Camerata from South Africa and the Westminster Choir, the Collegium Regale, the Clare College Choir and the early music ensembles I Fagiolini from England and the Ensemble europeén William Byd from France; guest composers James MacMillan from Scotland and Tarik O’Regan from England; hymnographer I-to Loh from Taiwan; choral conductors Carl Høgset from Norway, Stefan Parkman from Sweden, Sir David Willcocks, Sir Neville Marriner, and (in 2008) Stephen Laytonfrom England; Krzysztof Perderecki from Poland, and Helmuth Rilling from Germany; artists Nalini Jayasuriya from Sri Lanka, Sawai Chinnawong from Thailand, Wisnu Sasongko from Indonesia, He Qi and (in fall 2007) Huibing He from China, Adrian Paci from Albania and Italy, and Hanna Cheriyan Verghese from Malaysia; organists Michael Gailit from Austria and Gerard Brooks and Thomas Trotter from England, Grethe Krogh from Denmark, Hans-Ola Ericcsson from Sweden, and (in fall 2007) Jon Laukvik from Norway and Harald Vogel from Germany; as well as an exhibition of molas by anonymous artists from the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. In preparation for the Institute’s 2006 study trip to Mexico, the Colloquium speaker series featured Mexican scholars, artists, and practitioners: Ricardo Valenzuela, Edward Pepe, Carlos Touché-Porter, and Clara Bargellini. We have also brought Canadian and American artists and scholars who specialize in various traditions of world music, art, and liturgy: Craig Russell and Lorenzo Candelaria (lecturers on topics of Mexican musical traditions), Ray Dirks (a painter of works about Africa focusing on Ethiopia), Laura James (a painter of Antiguan heritage with works forging links between African Americans and their countries of origin), the late Jaroslav Pelikan, who offered a lecture to complement a concert by Simon Carrington and the Schola Cantorum of creeds from around the world. In 2005 the ISM collaborated with other departments to present an international interdisciplinary conference “Sex and Religion in Migration” examining the development of religious and gender identities in the context of globalization, and bringing together scholars, authors, artists, and filmmakers from all over the world. In 2006, a collaboration with Amherst College brought scholars and practitioners from all over the world to Yale for a conference on "Sacred Music in Transition: Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Religion, Ritual, and Society." In 2008 the Institute will host an international liturgical conference entitled "The Spirit in Worship and Worship in the Spirit."

Institute students and faculty travel the world as individuals, and also as a group for study tours every other year. In 2004, organ majors played upon instruments in northern Germany, and then joined with the rest of the ISM in travel to Denmark and Sweden. In May 2006 the Institute visited Mexico; in 2008 the destination will be Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia.

(Updated July 2007)