Trinity Church Ascension Day Service

I believe I do not often trouble your columns with my remarks, not half so often as I would like to, were it for other duties—but now and then steam accumulates, and an escape at the safety valve of one’s intellectual being is healthy.

My text on the present instance is a very grand choral service at Trinity Church, New York, on Ascension day, May 15th, by a reinforced choir of 60 boys and men, composed of the regular choir of the church, that of Mr. Frank Gilder of St. George’s Church, Flushing, and a number of stragglers from other quartets. The service was at eleven o’clock, a.m., and long before that hour there could hardly be obtained standing room in the vast edifice, so thronged was it, despite the rainy weather.

After a voluntary by Mr. Henry S. Cutler, the organist of the Church, (an improvisation, by the way, which did him great credit), the clergy and choristers defiled from the robing-room doors into the chancel, all in their milk-white surplices, which, reflecting the light of the brilliant candelabra, presented a most impressive picture, and one which strongly contrasted with the murky state of atmosphere out of doors.

To make a very homely, but perhaps pardonable comparison, the two sides of the crowded chancel where the clergy and choir sat, looked like two huge musical snow-banks, and I hope the reader will not be pierced with ‘a cold shiver of delight’ at the thought, as Charles Lamb says! However that may be, it certainly was one of the most beautiful sights imaginable, viewed from the organ-gallery, and was a fit precursor to the beautiful sounds which were to follow.

The Venite Exultemus Domino, sung to a Gregorian tone in unison, and of course, antiphonally, Mr. Cutler keeping up an interesting though not always felicitous change of harmony during each verse, until the Gloria Patri, when the voices branched out into full parts and the organ formed a glorious foundation for the entire musical structure. The effect of this immensely powerful choir was irresistible. It was actually more noble than I have ever heard from choruses of mixed voices, two and three hundred strong, and made me long to hear Handel’s or Mendelssohn’s choruses sung in such a manner and by such material, but quadrupled numerically.

The service consisted of Nare’s popular but effective Te Deum and Jubilate in F, sung with great accuracy and an ensemble truly surprising. They also performed Cutler’s Anthem to Psalm XLVII, verses 5 and 6, ‘God is gone up with a merry noise and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet,’ all done in the same careful manner. The verse passages were sustained by Masters Hopkins, Ehrlich, and Grandin, the first being no relation however of the Vermont tribe by the same name. A tenor solo was also sung in pure choral style (which is saying a good deal now-a-days) by Mr. Sam. D. Mayer, an amateur, but who should rather be called an amateur artist. This was the most successful trial yet made here of the effect of a purely male chorus on so grand a scale, where the soprano and alto parts were sustained by boys alone, and it was equaled the most sanguine expectations of all.

Great credit is due Messrs. Cutler and Gilder; especially the latter, he living in a small country town, and having struggled against the petty jealousies and old-womanish antipathies to anything like ‘popery’ which are always rife in such cess-pools of artistic ambitions; besides which both these gentlemen have had to furnish means for bringing about so fine an exhibition of the possibilities of boyish capacity.

Our New York dilettanti are gradually becoming reconciled to boy choirs.

Truly yours, Timothy Trill.”