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Harvard Glee Club

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File:Harvard Glee Club logo.png
Harvard Glee Club logo

The Harvard Glee Club is a 60-voice, all-male choral ensemble at Harvard University. Founded in 1858, it is the oldest college choir in the United States.[1] The Glee Club is part of the Holden Choruses of Harvard University, which also include the all-female Radcliffe Choral Society and the mixed-voice Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. All three groups are led by Conductor Dr. Jameson Marvin and Associate Conductor Kevin C. Leong.

The Glee Club was long a fixture of the Boston music scene, performing frequently with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles, but this local prominence has lessened in recent years. However, thanks to over 80 annual spring tours to different regions of the United States and appearances at the Kennedy Center Honors and in Leonard Bernstein's popular series The Unanswered Question, the Glee Club has garnered some national recognition; tours around the world have brought the group further attention. A number of notable people were members of the Glee Club during their time at Harvard, and numerous major composers of the 20th and 21st centuries have dedicated works to the group.

History

Founding and development

File:Harvardgleeclub.jpg
Historical image of the Glee Club around 1875

The Glee Club was founded in 1858 by a group of students to sing glees and part-songs. The group remained small until the end of the nineteenth century, when growth in its size and on-campus profile made higher musical aspirations possible. In 1919, it invited Dr. Archibald T. "Doc" Davison, the choirmaster of Harvard's Memorial Church, to become Glee Club conductor as well. 1921 saw the Glee Club's first European tour, which, though not the first such tour by a college group, was the most extensive to that point; the group was officially invited by the government of France, and the tour was covered by the press in the US and Europe.[2] This tour also resulted in a spate of new work written expressly for the Glee Club by such composers as Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Gustav Holst.[3] Under "Doc" Davison, the Glee Club (and the Radcliffe Choral Society) became the choirs of choice for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and frequently recorded with them; their recording of La Damnation de Faust won a Grand Prix du Disc, and a recording of the Mozart Requiem in memory of former U.S. President and Harvard graduate John F. Kennedy received a nomination for a Grammy.[3] The relationship with the BSO continued until the creation of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus; both Club and Society continue to sing with the BSO on occasion.

Since the retirement of Doc Davison, the Glee Club has had only four conductors: G. Wallace “Woody” Woodworth, who led the group from 1933-1958; noted Beethoven scholar Elliot Forbes, from 1958-1970, and who led the group on an extensive tour around the world in 1961;[4] F. John Adams, 1970-1978; and Jameson N. Marvin since 1978.

Since the arrival of Jameson Marvin as conductor of the Glee Club, the group has continued to tour extensively, and has been invited to a number of conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, invitations that are only extended through a blind audition process. Most recently, the Glee Club appeared at regional conventions in Pittsburgh in 2002 and Boston in 2004 and at a national convention in Los Angeles in 2005. Concerts led by Dr. Marvin have been favorably received across the country and around the world.[5]

Notable alumni

Many Glee Club members and assistant conductors have gone on to become leaders of American music, including composers, choral directors, and orchestra managers across the country. Some notable alumni of the Glee Club include:

The Glee Club today

The Harvard Glee Club is faculty directed but entirely student managed. Students hold the elected positions of President, Vice President, and Secretary; they also hold appointed positions such as Manager, Financial Manager, and Sales Manager. Each tour and major project, such as a large concert or recording project, has its own student manager. As such, the students themselves are in charge of selecting concert venues, managing a six-figure yearly budget, and taking care of virtually every facet of the group other than rehearsing and selecting repertoire.

The Glee Club rehearses in Holden Chapel in Harvard Yard, one of the oldest college buildings in America (built in 1744).[12] Each year, major concerts include the Harvard-Princeton and Harvard-Yale Football Concerts, joint concerts that have taken place the night before these football games for more than a century; annual concerts also take place at Christmas and during Harvard's Arts First celebration in May. The Glee Club tours a different part of the United States every spring break; recent spring tours have taken the group to northern California, the Upper Midwest, the Deep South, and Texas. The Glee Club also takes month-long summer tours roughly every 4 years. Recent summer tours have included trips to East Asia (1993), Australia (1998), Scandinavia (2002), and Central Europe (2005). During the most recent tour to Central Europe, the group performed at such venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Mariacki Church in Kraków, the Matthias Church in Budapest, and as guests of the Kodály Festival in Hungary and the Dvorák Festival near Prague.[13]

The Glee Club is currently in the midst of planning its 150th anniversary celebration, which is scheduled to include a large-scale cross country tour culminating in an appearance at the Ravinia Festival in 2008.[14]


The group performs most of its "home" concerts in Harvard's Sanders Theatre, which is renowned for its excellent acoustics.[15]

Musical tradition

Sanders Theatre at Harvard University, location of many Glee Club concerts

The Glee Club performs a wide range of repertoire. Music of the Renaissance is integral part of that repertoire, as is folk music, especially of America and Eastern Europe.

In recent years, the Glee Club has performed numerous major works for male choir, including Schubert's Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, Brahms's Alt-Rhapsodie, Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, and Argento's Revelation of St. John the Divine.

Symphony collaborations over the years have included multiple performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) under all of its conductors since 1917, as well as with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and the Italian Radio Orchestra. Some BSO highlights include the American premiere of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, later recorded with the BSO under Bernstein, two Berlioz recordings - Romeo et Juliet and La Damnation de Faust, and Mozart’s Requiem. In 1973, the Glee Club performed Bernstein's Chichester Psalms with the composer conducting at the Vatican. The Glee Club now frequently performs with Boston's Orchestra of Emmanuel Music.[3]

Finally, the Glee Club frequently performs traditional Harvard football songs, such as "Yo-Ho," "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard," "Harvardiana," "The Gridiron King," "Soldiers' Field," and "Up the Street."

Glee Club Lite

The Glee Club also has a subset called "Harvard Glee Club Lite," or simply, "Lite." This group, which features 12-16 singers and performs pop and jazz a cappella arrangements, was formed in 1985 to give Glee Club members a chance to sing a wider range of music; Harvard has over a dozen a cappella groups on campus, and Lite allows students to experience both types of ensemble - a small, student-directed pop-driven group and a larger, faculty-led choral ensemble.[16]

Composers who have dedicated works to the Harvard Glee Club

File:Milhaud.jpg
Darius Milhaud's dedication for Psaume 121 (1921) reads "Au Harvard Glee Club"

Another cornerstone of the Glee Club's repertoire is contemporary music; the group has a long history of commissioning or simply receiving work from prominent composers, some of whom are listed below, with the title of the work when available; each published work notes the dedication to the Glee Club on its title page:

In addition, the Glee Club's conductors have a long tradition of dedicating folk song arrangements and renaissance editions to the group; Jameson Marvin's arrangements are published primarily by Oxford University Publishing and Earthsongs.[17]

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Student Organizations: Harvard Glee Club". President & Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  2. ^ "Invites Harvard Glee Club." New York Times: 22 December 1920. Available here, accessed 1 Feb 2007.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Dr. Bernard Kreger. "Harvard Glee Club (Men's Choir)". Bach Cantatas website. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessed= ignored (help)
  4. ^ "11 Awarded Honorary Degrees". The Harvard University Gazette. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  5. ^ Tim Page. "Harvard Singers". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  6. ^ Paul Wittke. "Virgil Thomson: Vignettes of his Life and Times". The Virgil Thomson Foundation. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  7. ^ Geoffrey Norris. "I owe my knowledge of music to the Harvard Glee Club". The Telegraph of London. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  8. ^ a b Feeney, Mark, and Edgar Driscoll Jr. Elliot Forbes obit. Boston Globe, 13 January 2006. Retrieved 20 January 2006. Available here
  9. ^ "News from the Library of Congress", 17 February 2006, retrieved 20 January 2006. Available here.
  10. ^ Trainor, Bernard, & Warren Weaver. "Washington Talk." New York Times, 29 April 1988. Retrieved 20 January 2007. Available here
  11. ^ "American Arts Alliance Board of Directors". American Arts Alliance. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |Accessdate= ignored (|accessdate= suggested) (help)
  12. ^ Alvin Powell. "Newly Renovated Holden Chapel Opens Its Doors to Song and Study". The Harvard University Gazette. Retrieved 2006-11-03.
  13. ^ Glee Club website: Tour schedule. Retrieved 1 February 2007. Available here.
  14. ^ "Harvard Glee Club homepage". Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  15. ^ "Sanders Theatre". Office for the Arts at Harvard. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  16. ^ Harvard Glee Club Lite website, Retrieved 20 January 2007, available here.
  17. ^ Curriculum Vitae of Dr. Marvin, see References.

References

  • Forbes, Elliot. A History of Music at Harvard to 1972. Harvard University Press, 1972.
  • Bernstein, Leonard. The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. Harvard University Press: 2006.
  • The Glee Club website contains information about the group's history, repertoire, tours, and managerial structure.
  • Curriculum vitae of Jameson Marvin, Harvard music department webpage, available here

See also

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