Harvard, Princeton Glee Clubs

Amazing, what a bunch of highly intelligent boys can do when they set their minds to it. Last night, for instance, in one and the same concert, they produced two entirely different programs. The first rested on names like Mozart, Beethoven Carter, and Des Pres. The second also returned to an age that is past, but not the one of Beethoven and Des Pres; it recreated the Harvard and Princeton that were small, select prep schools for the ministry and the law, where the boys went out on the field Saturday afternoon to have a good tussle, and the night before they sang songs after supper. As Princeton's and Harvard's football songs thrilled Sanders last night, if you had shut your eyes, you could have seen the old Headmaster looking on proudly. And justly proud he would have been, too. In both programs, his boys--the Glee Clubs of Princeton and Harvard--did him honor.

In the first program, Princeton's first moment of glory came in the Prisoners' chorus from Fidelio, "O welche Lust!" From the quiet, weirdly mobile introduction of the piano, the chorus swelled to the turbulent, if slightly breathy, prisoners' cries. In the Yowes," a Scottish folk song arranged by R. Vaughan Williams, the opening solo of baritone William Parker reduced to complete silence the usual rattlings and coughings of a Sanders audience. The chorus, which by then had warmed up and had warmed its audience to it, continued the delicate clarity with which Paker had begun; conductor Walter Noliner made the song Princeton's finest instant.

Harvard's triumph in serious music took the form of Elliott Carter's Defense of Corinth. In the two chansons by Pierre Certon (1510-1572) with which the Harvard Glee Club began, El Forbes' boys displayed their tremendous energy.

In Hassler's Gratias Agimus Tibi, they showed that they were virtuosos in articulation; 130 of them could say "tea" and have it sound as if one person said it. But not until The Defense of Corinth did they combine these virtues with their extraordinary flexibility in dynamics, their impeccable intenation and their sense of humor.

It was the second program, the football concert, that finally roused the Sanders audience and conjured up the old school ties. Before its football medley, the Princeton Club let the Harvards know what they were good for in a parody of Harvard fight songs.

When the Harvard Freshman Glee Club and the two senior Glee Clubs joined for the concluding "Old Nassau" and "Fair Harvard," one could only think how much heart those boys had--and that it was good that that heart pumped blood which was, if not blue as least orange and black, and crimson.

Harvard's triumph in serious music took the form of Elliott Carter's Defense of Corinth. In the two chansons by Pierre Certon (1510-1572) with which the Harvard Glee Club began, El Forbes' boys displayed their tremendous energy.

In Hassler's Gratias Agimus Tibi, they showed that they were virtuosos in articulation; 130 of them could say "tea" and have it sound as if one person said it. But not until The Defense of Corinth did they combine these virtues with their extraordinary flexibility in dynamics, their impeccable intenation and their sense of humor.

It was the second program, the football concert, that finally roused the Sanders audience and conjured up the old school ties. Before its football medley, the Princeton Club let the Harvards know what they were good for in a parody of Harvard fight songs.

When the Harvard Freshman Glee Club and the two senior Glee Clubs joined for the concluding "Old Nassau" and "Fair Harvard," one could only think how much heart those boys had--and that it was good that that heart pumped blood which was, if not blue as least orange and black, and crimson.