Harvard Glee Club
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About the Group
The Harvard Glee Club is faculty-directed but entirely student-managed. Thus in addition to elected positions familiar to most clubs, undergraduates hold positions of manager, financial manager, sales manager, librarian, and so on. The "executive committee" is ultimately in charge of all tours, budget questions, and other issues not directly related to the music. An alumni Foundation provides guidance and manages the Glee Club's endowment.
The Glee Club rehearses in Holden Chapel in Harvard Yard, one of the oldest college buildings in America. Each year, major concerts include the Harvard-Princeton and Harvard-Yale Football Concerts, joint concerts that have happened the night before those respective football games for over 100 years; there are also annual concerts 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, and 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).
History
The Glee Club was founded in 1858 by a group of students to sing glees and part-songs. For most of the 19th century the group remained small, but after 1900 the singers decided they wanted the group to reach for higher musical standards. In 1919, they invited Dr. Archibald T. "Doc" Davison, the choirmaster of Harvard's Memorial Church, to conduct the Glee Club as well. 1921 saw the Glee Club's first European tour, which while not the first such tour by a college group, was the most extensive to that point; the tour was copiously covered by the press of the United States and France. "Doc" Davison also fostered a relationship between the Glee Club (and the Radcliffe Choral Society) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a relationship that remained strong until the creation of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and its ascendance to the position of the BSO's choir.
After the retirement of Doc Davison, the Glee Club has had only four conductors: G. Wallace Woodworth (“Woody”), 1933-1958; Elliot Forbes (“El”), 1958-1970; F. John Adams (“F. John”), 1970-1978; and Jameson N. Marvin (“Jim”) since 1978. Many of their students and Assistant Conductors have become leaders in American music, including many composers, the current choral directors at institutions from Cornell University to Occidental College, and numerous managers or orchestras and festivals all over the country. Some notable alums of the Glee Club include Virgil Thomson, Elliott Carter, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Fine, John Harbison, William Christie, Hugh Wolff, Justice Harry Blackmun, and writer John Silas Reed.
The Glee Club is currently in the midst of celebrations in anticipation of its 150th anniversary in 2008.
Musical Tradition
The Glee Club performs a wide range of repertoire. Music of the Renaissance, the area of expertise of F. John Adams and Jim Marvin, has become an integral part of that repertoire, as have folk songs of the world, especially of America and Eastern Europe. Another cornerstone of the repertoire is contemporary music, and the group has a long history of commissioning work from prominent composers. The Glee Club has premiered works by Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Gustav Holst, Irving Fine, Elliot Carter, John Harbison, Virgil Thomson, Morten Lauridsen, Stephen Paulus, and many others; new commissions from Paul Moravec and Dominick Argento are forthcoming.
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 Survivor from Warsaw, and Argento's Revelation of St. John the Divine. The Glee Club has also performed at many conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, most recently at the 2005 national convention in Los Angeles.
Symphony collaborations over the years have included multiple performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra 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, the latter of which won a Grand Prix du Disc; and Mozart’s Requiem, which won a Grammy nomination for a concert performance in memory of former U.S. President and Harvard graduate John F. Kennedy. 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.
Finally, the Glee Club frequently performs the traditional Harvard Football Songs, such as "Yo-Ho," "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard," "Harvardiana," "The Gridiron King," "Soldiers' Field," and "Up the Street."
See also
External links
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