At the Choir School of St. Thomas in Manhattan the other morning, more than a dozen boys, dressed in matching white polo shirts and gray slacks, gathered in a gymnasium to rehearse hymns for Holy Week services, as their predecessors had done for more than a century. .
When Jeremy Filsell, the church’s organist and director of music, asked the boys for more precision when they sang the line about “the voice of an angel crying” from Renaissance composer William Mundy’s “Sive Vigilem,” the boys tried again, the their high, clear voices ring out in Latin.
“Nice!” he said. “This is!”
For 105 years, the Choir School of St. Thomas was something of an anomaly: a residential school steeping boys in centuries-old choral traditions more generally associated with the great cathedral cities of England than with Midtown Manhattan. The boys, between the ages of 8 and 14, live at the school and sing five services a week at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue.
Now St. Thomas, an Episcopal church revered for its music program, is considering closing its choir school, one of the world’s few remaining boarding schools for young choristers. The church said the endowment, annual fundraising and tuition were no longer enough to cover the roughly $4 million a year it costs to run the school — which represents about 29 percent of the church’s $14 million budget.
The church will decide by October whether to keep the school open after June 2025.
The Rev. Canon Carl F. Turner, the church’s rector, said St. Thomas has run into trouble in part because of a misperception that it has abundant resources, which has hurt fundraising. The church, built of limestone in the French High Gothic style, stands 95 feet tall in the shadow of skyscrapers along Fifth Avenue in one of New York’s most elegant neighborhoods.
“A lot of people think we should be the richest church in the country,” he said. “But it costs a lot of money to maintain that tradition. And now the money is running out.”
The problems facing the school, which St Thomas explained in a letter to parishioners this month, added a somber note to Holy Week, which in the Christian faith commemorates the last days of Christ’s life, between Palm Sunday and of his resurrection at Easter.
In the letter, church leaders said they hope to mobilize the community to support the church. The church’s $138 million endowment is not enough to continue supporting the school, the letter said, adding that “simply put, the money is running out.” (Restrictions on the endowment mean that only a declining portion of it can be used to cover choir school expenses.)
“To continue to provide the functional and musical life for which we have become so well known and to make our finances sustainable in the long term,” the letter said, “the current residential boarding school model will have to change.”
Some alumni of the school have expressed concern over the possibility of it closing, saying the church will have to find other cuts.
Ian Fisher, a 1995 graduate, said the residential model was necessary to ensure the quality of the St. Thomas Men’s and Boys’ Choir, the church’s flagship ensemble.
“The men’s and boys’ choir — at a world-class level — is an irreplaceable treasure,” he said, “and by far the most unique offering St. Thomas has to God and the world.”
St. Thomas leaders say even if they close the school, they are committed to maintaining a boys’ choir and maintaining the rigor of the church’s music program. However, they acknowledge that closing the school could damage the sound the choir has long been known for.
“If we lose the school, it’s gone forever,” Filsel said. “But if we keep at it, it’s something we can build on.”
Many choral traditions are under pressure in the 21st century. The Vienna Boys’ Choir struggled to keep up with rising costs. the Austrian government helped bail out the whole thing last year with an $884,000 grant. Westminster Choir College, a conservatory owned by Rider University, abandoned its longtime campus in Princeton, NJ, in 2020 due to budget pressures. Ryder tried to sell the Princeton campus but ran into legal hurdles.
St. Thomas Choir School, which opened in 1919, was modeled after choral boarding schools in Europe. Only a few remain, including the choir school of Westminster Abbey in England and the Escolania de Montserrat in Spain.
St. Thomas Choir School, with 28 students and 15 faculty and staff members, has struggled financially for decades, balancing its budget with the help of donations and endowments and dipping into investment funds. Tuition, at $20,570 per year, is heavily subsidized and many students receive scholarships.
The cost of labor, food service and maintenance of the choir school building, just south of Central Park, has risen faster than the rate of inflation, the church said. To cut costs, the church cut its budget by about $800,000, canceled a planned choir tour of Britain and delayed nearly $4 million in capital projects.
Since the pandemic, fundraising has proven challenging and the church’s stocks have dwindled. The church estimated it would need an additional $50 million in endowed funds, or an additional $2.5 million in annual revenue, to keep the school running. He said the church’s annual pledge drive and other philanthropic support brought in $4.3 million in 2022.
The housing model was critical to the choir’s success, but leaders at St. Thomas said it may no longer be practical due to financial constraints.
“These are ancient traditions that are disappearing and they have disappeared in so many places,” Father Turner said. “It’s here, alive and well, in New York of all places. But it may not be in the future. And I think people need to know that this is more than just an icon culturally, this is something that is deeply embedded in history, in tradition, that changes lives and touches people’s lives.”
Filsell said the residential model was “critical to the standard we aspire to produce”.
Choirs come from all over the country and many would not be able to attend if they had no place to live. And because their home is close to the church, they can attend intensive rehearsals and master the ambitious repertoire relatively quickly, learning Handel’s “Messiah,” for which the church is famous, in about a week.
As parishioners gather to observe Holy Week, the church has drawn on teachings from Christianity to help deal with uncertainty.
Father Turner said some in the congregation would inevitably be concerned about the future of the boys’ choir on Good Friday, when students sing some of the most solemn hymns in the repertoire to mark the crucifixion of Jesus.
But on Easter Sunday, he said, when they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the choir will sing some of the happiest music.
“We’re not afraid to go through tough times,” he said. “We believe that things can be made new.”
