Westminster's Way

Day after day last week until perspiration rolled down their faces and their slender grey-haired director was ready to drop, 100 students at the Westminster Choir School in Princeton, N. J., sang praises to God. They were preparing for this week's commencement, to be followed by an ambitious two-day music festival. This year, above all others, they wanted to show what they could do. Their choir was building a reputation as the best choral organization in the U. S. And it had undertaken Bach's B Minor Mass, a stiff test for seasoned professionals. Besides, it wanted to show why it had been invited to Soviet Russia this summer as the first musical group to represent the U. S.

The slender, grey-haired conductor, a pious wealthy woman and a Dayton, Ohio church which had earnest hard-working choristers gave Westminster Choir its start. The conductor was Dr. John Finley Williamson, quiet son of a British clergyman, whose aim in life was to improve church music, make it more devotional, restore some of the artistic prestige it had in the days of Palestrina, Haydn, Bach. The first Westminster Choir (1920) was composed of factory workers and named for Dayton's Westminster Presbyterian Church where it sang Sundays. But John Williamson was not content with one group's singing, no matter how expert. He wanted proteges who, like himself, would be willing to devote a lifetime to church and choral music. In 1926, encouraged by Mrs. Harry Elstner Talbott, he started the Westminster Choir School.

In Dayton the enrolment began with 50. In Princeton, where the School has settled to be in a college community near Manhattan, the number is up to 100. And next autumn there will be four new buildings so that the students will no longer have to hike three miles to classes. But John Williamson is proudest of his graduates' accomplishments. More than 400 have important church jobs. There is a Westminster Choir School in Japan, another in India. A Westminster graduate teaches music at the Silliman Institute in the Philippine Islands. Studying with Dr. Williamson now are natives of Korea, Brazil, a bushman from South Africa.

The Choir School is largely self-supporting and Dr. Williamson tirelessly supervises its vigorous four-year courses in harmony, theory, ear-training, conducting, hymnology, Bible. The world knows of the School through Mrs. Talbott, whose generosity and energy are a match for Dr. Williamson's devotion. The hand-picked Choir has been her pet philanthropy. She has financed its visits to over 200 U. S. cities. She took the 1929 singers to Europe where they were teased for drinking their toasts in water. But their music had high praise in every capital.

Mrs. Talbott, a portly, indomitable woman of 70, once had notions of becoming a singer herself. Instead she married Harry Elstner Talbott. an engineer who built the Soo locks and many a railroad. They had seven comely daughters, all married, and two sons. Harold, a famed polo player, is a director of Chrysler Corp.. Thompson-Starrett and many another organization. Nelson ("Bud") Talbott, Yale football captain in 1915, is president of N. S. Talbott Co., which controls Mc-Claren Ice Cream Cones, Friction Toys, and Vance Manufacturing Co. which makes steel in Pullman cars look like wood. There are 32 grandchildren who, like their parents, pay frequent visits to the matriarch in Dayton.

Mrs. Talbott used to have a busy hand in real estate in Florida, where she still keeps a home. She has been president of the Anti-Suffrage League in Ohio, of the Anti-Saloon League. But now the Westminster Choir and its forthcoming tour take most of her time. This week she was bustling around Manhattan, working on her plan to get the Russian tour financed by U. S. corporations doing business with the Soviets. But she planned to take time to go to Princeton. The festival is named in her honor. Besides as in years past, she will solo in "Beautiful Savior."

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