| Harvard Glee Club | |
|---|---|
| Choir | |
 | |
| Origin | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Founded | 1858; 167 years ago (1858) |
| President | Jake Truncale '27 |
| Music director | Andrew Clark[1] |
| Manager | Jack Flanigan '27 |
| Rehearsal space | Holden Chapel |
| Concert hall | Sanders Theatre |
| Affiliation | Harvard University |
| Associated groups | Harvard Choruses |
| Website | harvardgleeclub |
TheHarvard Glee Club (Glee Club orHGC) is a 60-voice, tenor-basschoral ensemble atHarvard University. Founded in1858 in the tradition of English and Americanglee clubs, it is the oldest collegiate chorus in the United States.[2] The Glee Club is part of theHarvard Choruses of Harvard University, which also include the treble voiceRadcliffe Choral Society and the mixed-voiceHarvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. All three groups are led by Harvard's current director of choral activities Andrew Clark.
The Glee Club has long been a fixture of theBoston music scene, performing frequently with theBoston Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles, but this local prominence has lessened in recent years.[citation needed] However, thanks to over 80 annual tours to different regions of the United States and appearances at the Kennedy Center Honors and inLeonard Bernstein's popular seriesThe Unanswered Question, the Glee Club has garnered 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.
The Glee Club was founded in 1858 by a group of students to singglees 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 Archibald T. "Doc" Davison, the choirmaster of Harvard'sMemorial Church, to become Glee Club conductor. In1921, the Glee Club embarked on its 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 ofFrance, and the tour was covered by the press in the US and Europe.[3] This tour also resulted in a spate of new work written expressly for the Glee Club by such composers asDarius Milhaud,Francis Poulenc, andGustav Holst.[4]
Under Davison, the Glee Club and theRadcliffe Choral Society became the choruses of choice for theBoston Symphony Orchestra and frequently recorded with them. Their recording ofLa Damnation de Faust won a Grand Prix du Disc, and a recording of theMozart Requiem in memory of formerU.S. President and Harvard graduateJohn F. Kennedy received a nomination for aGrammy.[4] The relationship with the BSO continued until the creation of theTanglewood Festival Chorus; both the Club and Society continue to sing with the BSO on occasion.
Since the retirement of Doc Davison, the Glee Club has had only five conductors: G. Wallace "Woody" Woodworth, who led the group from 1933 to 1958; noted Beethoven scholarElliot Forbes, from 1958 to 1970, who led the group on an extensive tour around the world in1961;[5] F. John Adams, 1970–1978;Jameson N. Marvin, 1978–2010; and Andrew G. Clark through the present.
Under the leadership of Jameson Marvin as conductor of the Glee Club, the group continued to tour extensively, and was invited to a number of conventions of theAmerican Choral Directors Association, invitations that were extended only through ablind audition process. The Glee Club appeared at regional conventions inPittsburgh in 2002 and Boston in 2004 and at a national convention inLos Angeles in 2005. Concerts led by Marvin were favorably received across the country and around the world.[6]
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. Alumni of the Glee Club notable for careers in music include:
In addition, a number of Harvard Glee Club alumni have gone on to distinguished careers in other areas. They include:
The Harvard Glee Club is faculty-directed but entirely student-managed. Each tour and major project, such as a large concert or production and release of a recording, 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.
The Glee Club rehearses primarily inHolden Chapel inHarvard Yard. Built in 1744, Holden is one of the oldest college buildings in America.[15]The group performs most of its "home" concerts in Harvard'sSanders Theatre, which is renowned for its excellent acoustics.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; frequent concerts also include ones with theRadcliffe Choral Society at Christmas and with all of the Harvard Choruses during Harvard'sArts First celebration in May. The Glee Club tours annually at no cost to its students over school breaks; recent tours have taken the group toNew York City (2025), theDominican Republic (2023),Florida (2022), andTexas (2019). The Glee Club also takes longer, several-week tours roughly every 4 years. Recent major tours have included trips toEast Asia (1993),Australia (1998),Scandinavia (2002), Central Europe (2005), and Western Europe (2023–4).
The 2007–2008 season marked the 150th anniversary of the Glee Club's founding. Highlights included a week-long tour of the Eastern Seaboard and a three-day festival in Cambridge from April 11–13, 2008. Nearly four hundred alumni of the Glee Club attended the April festivities, which included the world premiere ofDominick Argento's "Apollo in Cambridge: A Harvard Triptych," a performance of Igor Stravinsky'sSymphony of Psalms with the combined Holden Choruses and orchestra, seminars on a variety of musical, academic, and historical topics, and a well-attended Sesquicentennial Banquet.[16]The anniversary celebration continued into the summer of 2008 with a cross-country concert tour culminating in appearances atWalt Disney Concert Hall and theRavinia Festival.[17]
The Glee Club performs a wide range of repertoire. Music of the Renaissance is an integral part of that repertoire, as is folk music, especially of America and Eastern Europe. In recent years,[as of?] the Glee Club has performed numerous major works for male chorus, includingSchubert'sGesang der Geister über den Wassern,Brahms'sAlt-Rhapsodie,Schoenberg'sA Survivor from Warsaw, andArgento'sRevelation of St. John the Divine.
Symphony collaborations over the years have included multiple performances with theBoston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) under all of its conductors since 1917, as well as with theNew York andLos Angeles Philharmonics, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and the Italian Radio Orchestra. Some BSO highlights include the American premiere ofStravinsky’sOedipus Rex, later recorded with the BSO under Bernstein, twoBerlioz recordings -Romeo et Juliet andLa Damnation de Faust, andMozart’sRequiem. In 1973, the Glee Club performed Bernstein'sChichester Psalms with the composer conducting at theVatican. The Glee Club now frequently performs with Boston's Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, including another performance ofStravinsky’sOedipus Rex on February 23, 2018.[4]
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."
Singers are divided into four parts: tenor 1, tenor 2, baritone, and bass, though various arrangements often require a few singers to switch parts for balance or for the entire group to re-divide into two, three, or five-part harmony.
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, jazz, and folk a cappella arrangements, was formed in 1985 to give Glee Club members a chance to sing a wider range of music; Harvard has several 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.[18] Generally, much or all of Lite's repertoire is arranged by members. The signature song of the group is "Good Ol' A Cappella" bythe Nylons.
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 editions of Renaissance vocal pieces to the group; Jameson Marvin's arrangements are published primarily by Oxford University Publishing and Earthsongs.[19]
