Emmanuel Church has always valued music.  Music appropriations in the 1860s starting at nearly $3,000 per year rose to $4,000 in 1897, $7,000 by 1904, and $8,500 by 1911.  Lists of salaried workers in our Yearbooks (1883-1917) usually include three organists and the number of salaried choir members, which ranged from 55 to 75. Early vestry minutes record discussions about arranging for a Hook organ even before building funds had been completely raised.

Frederic Dan Huntington

The Rev. Dr. F.D. Huntington, first rector of Emmanuel Church (1860-1869), edited hymnals and wrote hymns.  His daughter Ruth Huntington Sessions, mother of composer Roger Sessions, studied music in Leipzig in the 1880s and described services at Emmanuel in her 1936 autobiography Sixty Odd.

When we got into the Rector’s pew, just under the pulpit, we all went down on our knees, and as we were very punctual but not ahead of time, that was usually the exact moment when the processional march wound up and the organ quieted down to slow soft chords, then came to a stop. An instant’s silence followed. Then from far off, as if he were up among the stars, Father’s voice rang out declaring, “The Lord is in His Holy Temple.”  That turned the place into a Holy of Holies. Afterward all the music seemed worshipful, although it must be conceded that most of the church music of the day was inferior. But we didn’t know that. Only now and then could we get a fine English anthem or a solo from a really great oratorio. When we did have that happiness, it was imprinted indelibly on our memories. I can hear Annie Louise Cary [1841-1921], a famous contralto who began her career in Emmanuel choir, as she sang Mendelssohn’s “O Rest in the Lord” to a rapt congregation.   

Leighton Parks

During the tenure of the Rev. Dr. Parks (1878-1904), a Committee on Music, consisting of one or two vestry members and him, was established by 1890. Heinrich Schuecker, harp, and Edith Jewell, violin player from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, began accompanying the choir in 1902. The 1905 Emmanuel Church Yearbook listed Mr. Heinrich Schuecker, harpist, and Adolph Bak, violinist. Emmanuel Choir Festivals sang an annual Bach cantata from 1901-1908.

Parks resigned from Emmanuel in 1904 to go to St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York. In 1905 he hired Leopold Stokowski as organist and choir director there.  St. Bart’s choir had a vocal quartet and fifteen sopranos, nine altos, six tenors, nine basses, a harpist, and occasionally a violin. Their 1895 Boston-built Hutchings organ was at that time the largest in America. Stokowski began with a $13,000 music budget, which rose to $19,000 within three years. His chorus and soloists learned parts from Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion in his first New York season and gave one of the earliest American performances of the entire work in 1907.

Debates about the appropriateness of professional church musicians are not new.

In the days when quartette choirs prevailed, there seemed to be a general complaint that the choir appropriated the entire music of the services, so that the congregation was obliged to remain silent, even in the singing of the hymns….The question as to how much of the musical part of the services the choir can justly appropriate to itself is one which is constantly recurring, and so much has been written about this whole matter of congregational singing, that it is only necessary to dwell upon it for a moment. It ought never to be forgotten that the office of music in religious worship is twofold–not only to express but also to excite devotion; and the devout worshiper can often be moved and made better as much by hearing an anthem as a sermon.…There can be no greater model for a church service than Bach’s Passion music, written as it is for trained soloists, a trained chorus, and the great congregation, when those mighty chorales occur, in which each and every worshiper is supposed to join, thus making a service in which all the known resources of the musical art are brought into play.

 –S. B. Whitney, Surpliced Boy Choirs in America, The New England Magazine 6(2), April 1892, available full text: http://anglicanhistory.org/music/whitney_surpliced.html.

Elwood Worcester

Our fourth rector, the Rev. Dr. Worcester (1904-1929) wrote in his report for the 1908 Yearbook:

Through the kindness of a member of the congregation we are to have this year the services of a very talented young violinist on Sundays when our regular accompanists are obliged to be absent. In my opinion, the addition of a good cello would greatly improve our instrumental music.

Arthur Sewall Hyde, Organist and Choirmaster (1900-1908), reported “A full choir of fifty boys and men sang on all Sundays from Oct 2, 1904 to June 25, 1905.”   Hyde presented a number of  compositions by parishioner composer Amy Beach  (1867-1944).  In a 1914 interview she exclaimed:

Ah, Bach! I don’t mind calling him my idol of idols among composers. And his day is not even yet fully come. Do you remember how Chopin used to play nothing but Bach for a whole day before he gave a piano recital?…Some time I believe the day is coming when I shall play nothing else but Bach….What he has said musically cannot be repeated.

In 1908 Hyde became organist and choirmaster at St. Bartholomew’s in New York, where he worked again with our former rector Leighton Parks and composer Amy Beach.

Mrs. Beach was confirmed at Emmanuel in 1910, and buried her mother and husband, Dr. H.A.A. Beach, from Emmanuel. Her song “Ecstasy” was sung in 1894 by contralto Mrs. Homer E. Sawyer at the Boston Music Hall for the benefit of Emmanuel Church and the Baptist Hospital. A number of performances of  Beach’s music under Hyde’s direction are recorded in Emmanuel leaflets including an Ante Communion Postlude Invocation (Dec. 24, 1905) and the Evening Prayer Offertory Anthem “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest” ( April 8, 1906).

Lynnwood Farnam, Emmanuel organist (1913-1918), also used Amy Beach’s music at services in 1914 and 1915.  Service leaflets record a number with her Benedictus in A.  The Report of the Organist and Choirmaster in the 1917 Yearbook said: “The past season has been one of unusual interest. Among the choral works sung were…a selection from Bach’s “St. John” Passion and a new Cantate Domino and Deus Misereatur by Mrs. Beach.”

Amy Beach’s Benedictus and Benedictus es (both 1922) were premiered in February, 1924, at Emmanuel.  The anthem “Let This Mind Be in You”  (opus 105) was first sung here on Palm Sunday, 1924. In 1927 she spent Christmas in Boston and “heard her ‘Constant Christmas’ beautifully given” at a carol service on Christmas Day carol here. She reported that performances of her Benedictus es, Benedictus, Kyrie, and Gloria tibi played here on on 9 January, 1928, “went finely”.

Farnam also loved Bach.  In the Muscial Times (966: 543, August 1, 1923) he maintained, “Bach is an easy first, evergreen and inexhaustible. The longer I live, the more wonderful he becomes.“ The Lynnwood Farnam Society notes that his

complete organ works of Bach series in 1928-1929 [in New York] was the first truly complete Bach series to be finished in the world. It was so popular that he had to play each program at least twice. He also championed contemporary organ music, especially from France. He was close friends with Marcel Dupré and Charles Tournemire.

His 1912 Choirmaster’s Report states:

In the spring I started what should be in time an interesting and useful addition to the musical library of the church, namely, a musical reference library containing examples of most of the best known oratorios and sacred cantatas, the service music and anthems most in use, and bound programs of the services of Emmanuel Church from 1900 to the present day.

In 1913 the Rev. Dr. Elwood Worcester wrote of Weston Gales‘ retirement and the choice of Lynnwood Farnam to succeed him:

We sustained a severe loss during the year in the retirement of Mr. Gales from the conduct of our music, to which he had given himself, body and soul, for five years…I think I am voicing the sentiment of all our people when I say that the Music Committee was well guided in the choice of Mr. Farnam as Mr. Gales’ successor, and I hope that the difficult problem of music and of the character of our services has been settled for years to come. I have never known a congregation so appreciative of music as ours. A great many of our people are musical and very sensitive to the music performed in the church service”….As an organ player, Mr. Farnam has few equals.

Alfred Holy, harpist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, joined violinist Adolph Bak in accompanying the choir that year.

In his 1917 Report of the Organist and Choirmaster Farnam says:

The past season has been one of unusual interest. Among the choral works sung were … a selection from Bach’s “St. John” Passion, a new Cantata Domino and Deus Misereatur by Mrs. Beach, and a notable number of unaccompanied works (including several of the Russian school).

Worcester wrote in 1917 of the new organ.

The organ is the greatest musical instrument human genius has created. It is capable of inspiring every noble emotion, whether of joy or sorrow, of tenderness or adoration. It was the instrument of Johann Sebastian Bach, and through it his holy voice still speaks to Christendom.

Albert Williams Snow, Emmanuel Organist (1918-1938) who died in 1939, taught organ at New England Conservatory and performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The 75th anniversary (in 1936) of Emmanuel Church’s founding included music composed by parishioner Amy Beach and an anthem composed by organist and choirmaster Dr. Albert Snow. A special musical service on Dec 20, 1936, featured the choirs of Emmanuel and Trinity Churches including a Bach prelude, Martin Shaw anthem, Cesar Franck psalm, John Ebenezer West’s Magnificat in E Flat, anthems by Wesley and Brahms, Whiting’s Te Deum, and an organ recital.

Bach’s St. John Passion, was sung on Palm Sunday, 1953, conducted by Grover Oberle, organist (1946-1958).

Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Cecilia &  Bach Cantata Club

Emmanuel staff and parishioners show up in the history of other Boston musical institutions.  Original pew-owner Matthew S. Parker, as part of a group of Boston merchants and musicians eager to improve the level of available music, was a founding member of the Handel and Haydn Society in 1815. Acting as its first Secretary, then Treasurer and Trustee, Parker served for over forty-six years. Dr. Thompson Stone, Emmanuel organist and choirmaster  (1939-1945), was the artistic director of the Handel & Haydn Society (1927-1959).

Fifty Emmanuel choristers sang in the St. Matthew Passion with the Boston Cecelia in 1911. The Bach Cantata Club was founded in 1929. Walter Raymond Spalding, Emmanuel Choirmaster and Organist (1898–1900), wrote in his Music at Harvard: A historical review of men and events (NY: Coward-McCann, 1935):

The chorus consists of about a hundred voices, mostly graduates of Harvard and Radcliffe. The aim of the club is to present works of the caliber and length of Bach cantatas, and gives its concerts in a church where the music, which was never meant for a concert platform, may have its natural surroundings.…The Club’s own concerts have been given at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Emmanuel Church in Boston, and in the Fogg Museum in Cambridge.

Bach Cantata Series & Origin of Emmanuel Music

Craig Smith, who came to New England Conservatory in the Fall of 1967, began singing in our choir’s tenor section. He was appointed Precentor in 1968 and Music Director in 1970. Our service bulletin for Feb. 15, 1971, states:

An entire cantata by J.S. Bach is a regular part of our services until Easter, both at 11:15 on Sundays and 5:30 pm on Thursdays. The enthusiastic responses to the Cantatas done so far is an inspiration to all the persons who work so hard to undertake such an incredible program.…An isolated Cantata is performed now and again at a special church service or as a concert piece. But this series is unique in our time; the use of the cantatas as Bach intended — as an integral part of regular congregational services of worship. The instrumentation being used is exactly that originally called for by Bach – with one exception. Mr. Smith is using a harpsichord as more nearly approximating the small but brilliant organ that Bach used in his own parish.

In its coverage of the 2010 Institution of our rector, the Rev. Pamela L. Werntz, The Boston Musical Intelligencer interviewed her and composer John Harbison, who recounted how Craig Smith had worked with the Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw to develop our liturgically integrated series of Bach cantatas.  For more about the history of our connection with Emmanuel Music, please see its History & Mission.