The history of classical music in Haiti is symbiotic with a convent in Boston. The Society of St. Margaret was founded in England in 1854 by John Mason Neale (who, among other things, also wrote “Good King Wenceslas”); the group expanded to America in 1873, arriving in Boston, where the Episcopal branch of the Society is still headquartered. In 1951, Sister Anne Marie Bickerstaff, a native of Virginia, traveled to Port-au-Prince to teach at a missionary school, and found no institution for students to develop their musical talent, so she started one from scratch, based at Holy Trinity, the Episcopal cathedral and school in the city—the Ecole Ste. Trinité became Haiti’s leading conservatory, the Orchestre Philharmonique Sainte Trinité the country’s de facto national symphony, and, upon its construction in 1979, the school’s Salle Ste. Cecile the city’s main concert hall. Sister Anne Marie arranged visits from Boston Symphony Orchestra members and raised funds for the Holy Trinity Orchestra to travel to Tanglewood. Bickerstaff would become the Mother Superior of the St. Margaret convent in Boston, but maintained close connection to the Holy Trinity music program up until her death in 1995. The program has continued; most recently, the school and the Philharmonique teamed up with Yéle Haiti, the educational foundation started by Haitian-born Wyclef Jean, [UPDATE: and the Organization of American States—see comments] to found the Youth Orchestra of Haiti.

Information is still sketchy, but in addition to the widely reported collapse of Port-au-Prince’s Roman Catholic Cathédrale de Notre-Dame, Holy Trinity and its school have apparently also been leveled by yesterday’s earthquake. From a report on the news site Episcopal Café:

The sisters at the convent are alive. However, the rest of the news is devast[at]ing:… There is no Cathedral. The entire Holy Trinity complex is gone. The convent for the Sisters of St. Margaret… is gone. The Bishop’s house is gone. College St. Pierre is gone.

The Society of St. Margaret in encouraging donations, either through the Society itself, Episcopal Relief and Development, or Doctors Without Borders; complete information here. Yéle Haiti has also set up a mechanism for donation—from Wyclef Jean’s blog:

We are asking those interested to please do one of two things: Either you can use your cell phone to text “Yele” to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (it will be charged to your cell phone bill), or you can visit Yele.org and click on DONATE.

Obviously, meeting the most basic survival needs of Hatians is paramount in the immediate aftermath of the quake, but Bickerstaff herself was adamant that music and education was integral to charity. Time magazine profiled her in 1979. “Asked why she would spend so much money on music in such a poor nation, Mother Anne Marie replied: ‘We must feed the soul as well as the body.’”

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