The splendid work done by the Sacred Music Society of New York has been noticed in a previous chapter. Unfortunately the society did not live long. During the last five years of its existence it had a robust rival in the Musical Institute, a chorus of one hundred and twenty voices under the leadership of H. C. Timm, which has to its credit performances of Haydn's 'Seasons' (1846) and Schumann's 'Paradise and the Peri' (1848) among others. In choral as in orchestral matters New York was suffering from too much competition. Out of the débris of the two chief competitors arose, in 1849, the New York Harmonic Society, which lived until 1863 under the successive conductorships of Timm, Eisfeld, Bristow, Bergmann, Morgan, Ritter, and James Peck. In its own way the Harmonic Society was just as important and efficient as the Philharmonic, but longevity decidedly was not a feature of New York choral organizations. Out of the remains of the Harmonic came the Mendelssohn Union, of which Bristow, Morgan, Bergmann, and Theodore Thomas were successively conductors, and then followed the Choral Music Association, a most exclusively fashionable organization. The complaint from which New York choral societies were suffering at that time might accurately be diagnosed as anemia and it was fortunate that for several years previously there had been a large influx to the city of red Germanic blood. In 1847 a number of these lusty Germans got together and formed a male chorus which they called _Deutscher Liederkranz_. There was life in the _Liederkranz_, and art and sincerity and enthusiasm and everything that ought to be in a musical society. It gave a tremendous impulse to the art of choral singing in New York and the extent of its influence in the musical life of the community cannot easily be overestimated. The list of important works performed by it would be too long to quote here, but we may mention, as illustrating the quality of its taste, Mozart's _Requiem_, Mendelssohn's _Walpurgisnacht_, Haydn's _Schöpfung_, Schumann's _Des Sänger's Fluch_, Schubert's _Chor der Geister über dem Wasser_ and _Die Verschworenen_, Liszt's _Prometheus_, Meyerbeer's 'Ninth Psalm,' Bruch's _Odysseus_, Brahms' _Ein deutsches Requiem_ and _Schicksalslied_, and Hoffman's _Melusine_ and _Aschenbrödel_. There has been nothing anemic about the _Liederkranz_. In 1856 it admitted women to its choruses. This step had been contemplated for some years and in connection therewith there had been vigorous warfare within the ranks of the society. As a result the anti-feminist irreconcilables seceded in 1854 and formed the _Männergesangverein Arion_, which has since travelled at a musical pace as lively as that of its parent.