August 2024

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) is an interdisciplinary graduate center for the study and practice of sacred music, worship, and the related arts. Its students pursue degrees in choral conducting, organ, and concert voice with the Yale School of Music, or they engage in ministerial or academic studies in liturgy, religion and literature, music, or visual arts with the Yale Divinity School.

Sitting on the parapet of the story where the towers arise from the massive corpus are all kinds of devilish things that were contrived by a grandiose imagination and captured in the grinning stone by a forceful and strict hand. Wondrous animals with long beaks, pointy claws, with misshapen ears and distorted mouths, devils with devout wings, midgets with long beards sit there and gape at the city with large, vicious, lurking eyes.¹

The Diapason’s 20 under 30 winners represent leaders not only in performance (organ, harpsichord, carillon, and church music), but also those who build, restore, and maintain instruments. In our first interview with a young builder, we find out more about Nicholas Wallace, of The Diapason’s inaugural 20 under 30 Class in 2015.

Listen to the voices.

The harpsichord: an introduction, part 1

This month’s column, my first after a hiatus caused by now-resolved orthopedic issues, is my first in a short series of columns about the harpsichord. Since 1990 I have presented summer workshops to introduce the harpsichord to organists and pianists. This series is based on the approach that I have taken in those workshops.

Emma Lou Diemer