Harvard-Yale Glee Clubs

Folk songs are more fun than baroque music, but football songs are the most fun of all. At least that's the way I felt after last night's joint concert of the Harvard Glee Club and the Yale Glee Club in Sanders Theatre. The first two-thirds of the concert, with one important exception, were pleasant enough, occasionally humorous, at times pedestrian, but not really very much for a reviewer to praise or condemn. Then, at about ten o'clock, after some tepid renditions of a couple of spirituals, the Yale Glee Club burst, not totally unexpectedly, into Harvardiana.

Well, almost. It was evident after a very few moments that this was no ordinary rendition; in fact, it turned out to be an extended-very extended-parody of a Harvard fight song, complete with all the trimmings. From this the Elis went on to sing the fight songs of various other colleges; as the audience alternately hissed and applauded, conductor Fenno Heath ambled back and forth between the piano and the podium.

Shortly afterwards, the Harvard club retaliated by singing Happy Birthday to the Yale club on the occasion of its hundredth anniversary. The audience had a good time, and the singers seemed to enjoy it too. It's too bad the latter didn't have more original arrangements of the other songs to get enthusiastic over.

Much, however, as the audience (and I suspect, the singers) might have enjoyed an evening of football songs, there was other music on the program, and some of it was much worth remembering. I am thinking, in particular, of the Coronation Scene from Moussorgsky's Boris Godounov, sung by both clubs together. Any chorus of two hundred massed on a stage tends to be impressive, no matter what is sung. But the Moussorgsky was more than impressive; it was a triumph of high spirit and high decibels. The accompanists, playing what sounded like a two-piano arrangement of the massive Rimsky-Korsakoff orchestration, were heroic but more or less helpless: their tinkling didn't stand a chance against the full-bodied voices of the chorus. The music was sung in English; the translation, from the little I was able to hear of it, was appropriately martial. I am, I suppose, impressed by any loud sonority of sound, but this performance had more than volume; it was both articulate and exciting.

The balance of last night's program consisted largely of sixteenth-century religious music, American folk songs and spirituals, and a handful of unclassifiable songs. One of the latter was Francois Poulenc's Chanson A Boire, dedicated to the Harvard Glee Club and sung by the Elis. It's a sort of cadenza for chorus, and, despite occasional Gallic touches, did not sound very different from the American folk songs sung separately by both clubs.

When it came to folk songs, the local boys, (supposedly hailing from a citadel of patricianism) far outstripped the visiting firemen. The Harvard folk singing was robust, spirited, and just right for foot-tapping; it was a pity that the audience couldn't join in. The Elis, on the other hand, lacked the spirit that seemed to move their associates. They sang with almost mathematical precision not only in the folk songs, but in their entire repertoire. Mr. Heath was in full control all the time, evoking a wide range of dynamics and a very effective separation and balance of voices. From a technical standpoint, Yale topped Harvard, but in overall appeal the Harvardmen won out.

A Harvard-Yale Glee Club concert can end in only one way, I imagine, and last night's brashly adhered to tradition. The audience, which filled Sanders and spilled over into the aisles, joined the two clubs in singing Bright College Years and, of course, Fair Harvard. The Harvard accompanists, Richard Wilson and Dennis Duffala, seemed to be enjoying it as much as anyone else-and why not? It was the night before a big game, good feeling was, for the moment, running high, and mellifluous musics could not but add to the merriment. The combat was still a day off, and for the evening at any rate, harmony could prevail.