Era of Change For Harvard's Band

Before and in the middle of every Harvard football game, group of individuals in Crimson blazers saunters onto the field. The loud speaker announces in the inimitable (or unconquerable) Harvard University band, a band from which Harvard fans have come to expect a very special form of entertainment-- satrical shows available from no other band.

Although the band presented some of its best drills in several years this fall, severe problems have begun to develop. The bandsman is not an ordinary individual, and his type of person is disappearing from Harvard scene, creating a crisis for the band. Six years ago the band numbered round 140; throughout this season Mike Marmor felt luckey to have 90 in the block. A decade ago the band was spelling out three and four words at a time; this year Marmor discovered that he didn't have enough men to spell Harvard. In previous years group spirit and loyalty was raising this fall was at a record low. The football band was in troble: both its size and its spirits are depressed.

There are many factors which bear on this depopulation of the football band. Undoubtedly for the past few years a prime one has been the lack of incentive and opportunities for fun. The Administration seems to have viewed the band as a strained tolerance, and up until the Princeton game it made no move to help insure its continued proseprity. Only after continued and repeated protests was the band able to secure even a limited number of complementary tickets for dates, although other bands in the Ivy League have long had them. When Cornell's band came to Harvard, each man was given an allowence for overnight expenses and food. A Harvard bandsman attends out of town and he's pretty much on his own resources, and has to endure long bus rides to avoid overnight trips. These bus rides were sometimes revved by "raids" on various girls schools (i.e., unannounced concerts usually at pre-dawn hours, though the administration's attitude made this inadvisable on this year's Penn game trip. In past year's the bus rides were less objectional because dates were allowed to accompany the group. This practice was stopped a year ago, when the administration seemed to sense some danger for the girls. Scoffs Marmor, "A band trip is the safest date a girl can have. A man is with the band nearly all the time, and what can you do on a bus?"

Before the Princeton game this Fall, though, the administration seemed to have performed a sharp about-face. Dean Watson assured the band management that he was aware of their problems and willing to help. Immediately 64 complimentary tickets were granted, and the next week it was announced that girls could travel to Yale on the band busses. Bands-men eagerly await next year's Princeton trip to see if the new look will continue.

Another reason for the diminishing band is the steadily increasing study load at the College. Nearly all undergraduate organizations, have felt the academic squeeze, which has become a permanent fact of Harvard life. With academic responsibilities growing, more and more students have decided that they can't devote precious time to activities, and particularly to ones which make such a point in having fun.

But without question the biggest reason for the football band's dilemma is the new type of student entering Harvard. "We don't attract as many wonks," Marmor asserts, "because there aren't as many wonks in the College." The stiff competition for admission has, as the Bender report warned, led increasingly to a student body of studiers, who have little inclination to abandon the library for football drills. Ned Alpers, the new band manager, warns that it is "useless" to continue "whining for the old band," because the kind of people who composed it are no longer around. Alper feels that with proper recruiting (in the student body) the band can be expanded to 100, "but that is about the limit."

Admissions policies have radically changed the nature of the band as well as its size, and although the hard-drinking, party-loving 'raunch' group hates to admit it, director Walker, with his heavy emphasis on music, even to the occasional exclusion of fun, is only leading the band in directions it would follow sooner or later anyway. In Walker's estimation, there are three types of personalities in the band today: the raunch man, the man out for a good time but also anxious to work musically, and the pure musician. Because of the character of band activities, the latter group is quite small; most serious musicians work on their own or join the HRO. Admissions standards have cut into the raunch colony, and so the intermediate group is emerging as the majority element.

To meet the needs of these three elements, Walker proposes a triad organization consisting of the football band, a concert band, and a new group to be called the wind ensemble. The football band is largest of the three groups, and the one most generally known. Its standards of admission are not uncommonly high; the main idea is to get a lot of people out on the field, particularly brass players. The concert band is a cut-down version of the football band. Better balanced among woodwind, brass, and percussion, it plays considerably more than the football medleys and Harvard songs which comprise nearly the total repertoire of the football band. Concert marches, tone poems, suites, and light classical works comprise the bulk of its music. The wind ensemble, as it is conceived, would be a select group of 30-35 expert musicians interested in performing more difficult, but also more musical works, many of them by contemporary composers. 'Cliffes may be included in the ensemble.

"This split is the only way we can save the football band," Walker claims, "and at the same time continue to advance the standard of band music at Harvard." The new band administration, headed by Alpers, seems generally to approve of Walker's plans, but they, and the band as a whole, tend to be suspicious, fearing that Walker might eventually divert all the energy of the band away from football. Not so, says Walker, who feels that the more serious musicians are leaving the football band anyway and that their presence only inhibits the raunch group.

The wind ensemble has been in Walker's mind practically from the time he arrived at Harvard a year and a half ago. "The concert band can't play really fine music because it doesn't really want to," he says, "and because its audience won't accept it. They want to hear the traditional band music, and when we try playing something advanced, they are unreceptive." Alpers agrees, and for that reason insisted that the new wind ensemble be something completely separate from the Harvard band, with separate concerts. He also fears the elitist spirit the ensemble could develop, and is certain the two groups will appeal to "completely different types of audiences."

HAPPILY accepting the ensemble's divorced relationship from the band, Walker is hoping to have the music department sponsor the new group "in the same way it supports other fine music organizations such as the HRO and the Bach Society." He is working hard to "get the ensemble on its feet as soon as possible," and anticipates it will present works by Perischetti, Milhaud, and Hindemith "to a small, but discriminating audience."

The student administration of band seems pleased with the ensemble as it is now planned, because they feel it will lessen Walker's demands on the concert band, and give them a freer hand in running the organization. The big question mark is whether the ensemble will draw too many top players away from the concert group, leaving it musically feeble. This year no one will be allowed the concert group to join the ensemble, but next year no restrictions will restrain them.

Things are still quite uncertain now, but the band administration looks to the future, their major problems no longer as insoluble as they have been. With a continuation of the university's new, encouraging approach and an intensive recruitment prigram, the football band could revive. With its role more clearly defined, the concert band playing the standard band literature and taking a few adventuresome steps, should please bandmen and the public alike; with the wind esemble clearly oriented towards the very serious musician, the community show for the first time, a chance to hear and enjoy the finest music in the band literatur