Yale Institute of Sacred Music

Yale Institute of Sacred Music

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) is also affiliated with YDS. ISM was established at Yale in 1973 through a gift from Clementine Tangeman and her brother J. Irwin Miller. The Institute is a successor to the renowned School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City; the first director of ISM was organist Robert Baker, who had also been director of the School of Sacred Music. Over the decades at Yale, ISM has continued in its primary purpose of training musicians for the churches, and it supports programs in choral conducting, organ performance, voice, and church music studies (with the Yale School of Music) and in liturgical studies and religion and the arts (both with YDS). A focus on the arts and worship within theological education is possible at YDS because of the support given by ISM. ISM also offers generous scholarships to candidates for the M.Div. and M.A.R. in YDS and to musicians in the School of Music.