Perhaps no institution responded more wholeheartedly to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks last year than Trinity Church. As well it should have; located prominently at Broadway and Wall Street, Trinity was a near neighbor of the World Trade Center, and its satellite St. Paul’s Chapel, a few blocks up Broadway and directly across from the Trade Center grounds, served as the prime staging area for rescue workers.

Trinity’s weeklong commemoration relied heavily on its music program, long impressive and thriving in recent years as never before. On Friday, Sept. 9, to set the tone for a weekend full of official ceremonies, Trinity imported choirs from Washington, Boston and Bethlehem, Pa., to represent cities and a state directly affected by the attacks, and presented no fewer than 10 concerts, alternating more or less hourly between the church and the chapel. For at least one listener who took it all in, it was a stunning event.

And it was far from the only highlight of the program in a year of glowing promise and stellar achievement. In fact, having installed Julian Wachner as its director of music and arts in September 2010, Trinity Church, the major spiritual center of the financial district, was bidding fair to become its major cultural center as well. But with the new year, the church’s hard-charging music program seems to have hit a serious speed bump.

Under Mr. Wachner in 2011, the program added a new-music ensemble, Novus NY, to its mainstay Trinity Choir and Baroque Orchestra; hired an excellent organist, Renée Anne Louprette, formerly at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola; took its annual “Messiah” presentation, after performances in the church, to Alice Tully Hall, where it met with acclaim; and introduced several new ventures, including a celebration of St. Cecilia’s Day by the ensemble Tenet, to honor the putative patron saint of music, and a multifaceted Twelfth Night Festival, played out over the 12 days of Christmas.