Westminster Choir College Sacred Music

Westminster Choir College's Sacred Music Department offers education of the highest quality and broadest scope to Sacred Music majors that aspire to be leaders of the future.

The department is interdenominational and seeks to explore the excellence of various traditions of sacred music. The faculty has wide experience and expertise in such traditions as Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Roman Catholic, the Synagogue and Temple traditions, and others.

The curricula at both the undergraduate and graduate levels aim, on the one hand, to explore how familiar tradition can be blended with unfamiliar contemporary creativity in choral, congregational, and instrumental music for worship and, on the other hand, to provide a balanced study of theoretical matters and practical concerns. Technique, repertoire, and performance practice are therefore considered with theology, Biblical and post-Biblical religious history, and the development and practice of liturgy and worship.

Underlying all the offerings of the department is the understanding that sacred music is neither an optional extra nor merely a spiritual entertainment within the service of the church. It is rather an essential part of the liturgy and worship and therefore must have integrity and quality appropriate for its twin functions of carrying the Word of God to us, and our words of praise to God.

Undergirding the sacred music program are the offerings of the other Westminster academic and performance departments, the specialized collections containing sacred music materials in Talbott Library, and the vast network of affiliate churches in the greater New York-Philadelphia metropolitan area in which Westminster students are enabled to gain personal experience of a wide range of sacred music practice.