Mr. Salvatore Basile has done a great service to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral by writing its first history of music—from its origin in Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral in lower Manhattan through the present time.

Fifth Avenue Famousis not simply a compilation of historical facts about music. It ties these facts—and there are many—together with the events of New York as early as the late 1800s.

Mr. Basile’s book is also a journal of sorts, as it records how church music has been shaped and developed through such important documents as Pope Saint Pius X’sTra le Sollecitudini...

William F. Pecher had more than enough reason to be discouraged.

For most of his life, the organist had led an existence in which careful plans had always been made, but nothing had worked out exactly as planned. Pecher had been born sometime around 1840 (he made a life-long practice of concealing his age) to an affluent Manhattan family and educated in the city’s Catholic school system, and his musical aptitude had become apparent as early as his student years. Because keyboard proficiency was useful in polite society, his parents willingly organized the drawing-room musicales that stamped a home as...

The late nineteenth century was a fascinating time to be a church musician. The job didn’t carry the swank of centuries past, when choristers were lifelong retainers and routinely wore their robes in public as a declaration of pride, but it was possible for a musician to conduct an entire career in sacred music without losing face among his colleagues. This was definitely the case in cities, and in New York especially so; and at St. Patrick’s Cathedral—the newest, the largest, the most exciting of churches—very much so indeed.

Several factors contributed to this climate, and they had...

Because the process of grieving never fits into a business schedule, the early months of 1904 were a very black time for the musicians of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They were particularly so for Jacques C. Ungerer, who had just lost his mentor and closest friend, and whose job was about to become, for a while, impossible.

Not that it wasn’t impossible for choirmasters in every Catholic church.^*The impending changes hung over choir galleries like a sword of Damocles, bad because there was no timetable for their implementation, worse because they were taking place in a goldfish bowl atmosphere of...

In giving Pietro Yon authority over the music at St. Patrick’s, the Cathedral was committing to a very grand experiment. He would receive a lavish budget and whatever personnel he deemed necessary to create the kind of music for which he was famed. To enhance the experience, there would be a tripartite organ, one of the largest in the world.

The idea was costly but absolutely logical. St. Patrick’s was moving from national to international prominence, and its musical needs would be best served by a world-class musician who was also a world citizen. In this, Yon fit the bill...

For the leadership of its music, St. Patrick’s had traveled a circuitous path from the days of the modest William Pecher to the reclusive James Ungerer to the ebullient Pietro Yon. Now it would encounter the more complicated personality of Charles Courboin.

In a way, Courboin was a perfect successor to Pietro Yon because they shared not only similar traits but similar histories. Like Yon, Courboin had been awunderkind, organist of Antwerp Cathedral at age sixteen and an enthusiastically received virtuoso recitalist in various high-powered European locales. After arriving in the United States, he worked at a number of...

John Grady would tell friends that he had always dreamed of having one job—music director of St. Patrick’s. Whether or not that was strictly true, most of his existence could be viewed as preparation for his work at the Cathedral, or at least a place like it.

Called “the first native New Yorker since William Pecher to hold the position” (incorrect but close; he was a Long Islander, born in Great Neck in 1934, and for that matter he himself would skip over Pecher’s lineage with occasional claims that he was the first Americaneverto hold the post),...

Almost as quickly as the news of John Grady’s death was spreading through the ranks of choir members by phone, Monsignor Dalla Villa was sitting down to an emergency meeting with Donald Dumler to make the necessary arrangements—not only for Grady’s funeral, but for some sort of stopgap measures to continue the work of the music department. Because of this, the Archdiocesan Music Commissioner, John-Michael Caprio, had been asked to take part.

The first order of business would be the funeral, during which the choir would have a major role. “You’ll conduct it, of course,” said Monsignor Dalla Villa...

Whatever had befallen the music department of St. Patrick’s, its members could point with pride to the fact that their music had been led by a succession of only six men in more than a century—a serene contrast to the erratic histories of the music in many other Manhattan churches. And in the sadness of John-Michael Caprio’s farewell, as well as the death-vigil atmosphere that had overlaid Midnight Mass, members of the Cathedral Choir had nevertheless been able to find a measure of comfort. Their leadership was in the hands of a man who knew them personally, knew their...

Most histories of ongoing institutions tend to wrap up with a somewhat lame ending of Where-We’re-Going. In many ways (and especially for an institution like St. Patrick’s, which like a barometer must always respond to happenings both in New York and the world beyond), this is impossible.

It’s preferable, maybe, to end a history of music at the Cathedral by sitting in the Cathedral itself, quietly, looking hard at the surroundings. Trying to remember what it must have been like in the days when there were no movies, no television, no recordings, no amplification … when the mere sight of...