The Choral Society seems to have been eclipsed and perhaps absorbed by the New York Sacred Music Society, which was founded in the same year. The latter owed its existence to the somewhat peculiar circumstance of a strike among church choristers. Considerable reputation attached to the choir of Zion Church, which was known as the Zion Church Musical Association. The association applied to the vestry for an increase of salary or permission to give a concert. Their request was refused, and, after some bickering, the choir resigned and formed The New York Sacred Music Society. The history of this society is one of brilliant accomplishment. At first its means and its membership were limited, and its artistic ambitions were hampered by the lackadaisical attitude of most of its members, to whom the meeting room of the society was merely 'a pleasant place in which to pass an evening, to see their friends, and hear a little music.' Nevertheless, a few years after its foundation it was already doing work of a standard that must give it a notable place in the history of New York musical organizations. In 1827 it gave a concert for the benefit of the Greek patriots, with a program on which figured the names of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Arne, and Jomelli. There was an orchestra of twenty-seven, a chorus of about sixty, and a number of distinguished soloists, which included the famous Madame Malibran. 'From this period,' says the New York 'Musical Journal,' 'the history of the progress of the highest species of sacred music in this city is identified with the history of the society.' Four years later the Sacred Music Society produced the 'Messiah' in its entirety, under the leadership of Uriah C. Hill, whom we shall have occasion to meet later. There was an orchestra of thirty-eight instruments and a chorus of seventy-four voices. Encouraged by its success it gave Haydn's 'Te Deum' and 'Creation,' and in 1838 it produced Mendelssohn's 'St. Paul'--only two years after that work had made its first appearance at Düsseldorf. For reasons which we are unable to discover the Sacred Music Society ceased to exist in 1849. Possibly the musical public of New York were not overly inclined toward oratorio, and possibly also the society suffered from the competition of a number of rival organizations. Most of these, such as 'The Academy of Church Music,' were formed out of church choirs and very evidently aspired to rival the fame of the Sacred Music Society. None of them, however, attained any success. Their effect, indeed, was if anything, pernicious, for what New York then needed in its musical affairs was concentration rather than expansion.