The Harvard Glee Club: Life After F. John Adams

The scene was Mayslack's Polka Lounge in Minneapolis. The 67 Harvard men stood before the proud but bewildered Stan Mayslack, former professional wrestler, and the overflow crowd of lunchtime patrons. "Not since the second Dempsey-Tunney fight has a rematch been so feverishly demanded," wrote a local columnist. Four years earlier, the Glee Club had entertained Mayslack and his customers with Renaissance lamentations, and they were back for a return bout. Conductor F. John Adams '66, beer in hand, led the group in Harvard fight songs, and the noontime throng loved it.

Mayslack's lounge was just one stop on the Glee Club's North American tour last summer, a tour that celebrated the group's 120th anniversary. Club members were also saying farewell to their conductor of the past eight years, F. John Adams. In a controversial decision, the position of director of choral activities had been passed to Jameson M. Marvin, former director of choral activities at Vassar College. The transition leaves the Glee Club troubled, as senior members try to guide the group through a difficult passage.

The all-male Glee Club is the oldest college chorus in the country, founded in 1858. The club became the first college singing group to travel abroad when the French government invited it to perform in 1921. The Glee Club was also the first collegiate choral organization to go around the world in the 1950s. The club has since repeated the feat, most recently in 1967. Since 1965, the group has cut 43 records, including four in the last four years.

In the early 20th century, the club changed from a group of unorganized, rowdy musicians to a highly-structured, sophisticated unit, under the advent of their first conductor, Archibald T. Davidson. In so doing, the Glee Club "spawned a revolution in choral music by undertaking the serious performance of classical music," as one current member put it. Audiences, however, were not ready for the new approach. In its first attempts at classical music, the Glee Club was afraid it would be booed off stage.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Glee Club was much larger than it is today, with up to 150 members. "Then there was a freshman Glee Club and an upperclass Glee Club," Robert L. Holz '80 said. "Each performed as separate bodies. Each had its own management; they even cut separate records." In the early '70s, as the number of men in the College dropped due to increased female admissions, officials decided to merge the two groups and reduce the number of members to 60.

Adams was then assistant conductor to Elliott Forbes, who conducted the group throughout the 1960s. When Forbes stepped down, Adams shifted the group's emphasis to Renaissance music. In 1971, when some people began to fear that the Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society would be merged to fill the need for a mixed musical singing group in the University, Adams founded the Harvard-Radcliffe College Collegium Musicum, which he conducted until he left in 1978.

On the North American tour last summer, the Glee Club performed in 24 cities in the U.S. and Canada over an eight-week period. Traveling mainly by bus, the club gave 32 concerts before an estimated 60,000 people and spent $55,000, a figure that William M. Gorjance '79, summer tour manager, said "was a relatively low budget compared to other tours--I was conscious of transportation costs."

Gorjance said the 18-month-long planning of the tour "took a lot of mettle. It's not like I had a single image of it in my mind. There's no model of how to set up a tour, so it's more or less up to the individual manager." Gorjance said he spent the entire summer of 1977 working on the details of the tour, putting in 40 hours a week on concert arrangements while working a full-time job at the post office in the evenings.

Gorjance received no money for his efforts, but said he is playing up the experience on his business school applications.

The tour was not all work, no play, however. "We took half a day off on the Oregon Beach, and we saw Disneyland," Gorjance said. The group also stopped in at Yellowstone ("It snowed on us, can you believe it?"), and the Grand Canyon ("It really made the tour.") Midway through the tour, the Glee Club spent about a week in Southern California, where it performed in the open-air Hollywood Bowl under Mstislav Rostropovich and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Members called the summer tour a tremendous addition to the group's musical experience, exposure and confidence. "F. John was conducting well, and we could feel ourselves improving with each concert." Gorjance said. "In Seattle we felt we could do no wrong. F. John was never one to tell the group they had sung well. At intermission at the University of Washington, he stood up and said, 'Gentlemen, tonight you are professionals.'"

The club can only afford to go on a major tour once every three or four years, according to John T. Cahill '79, club vice president. Three years ago the group went to Sweden for 20 days over Christmas break, staying in an Upsula Summer Palace.

The Glee Club's future plans include a tour down the coast to Florida over spring break. The group will sing seven concerts and one church service, according to Richard Kvam '79, club manager. April 13-15, the group will sponsor the Annual Festival of Men's Choruses, featuring the Glee Club and guest groups from the University of Illinois at Urbana and Union College in New York. David E. Wheadon '79, president of the Glee Club, said the club will release a record of Christmas songs in the near future. The club will not go on a major tour again this summer.

The Glee Club is run by a six-man executive committee plus the conductor and the assistant conductor, Kvam said. Student managers and club executives estimate they spend up to 30 or 40 hours a week organizing and administering the group's activities. Members said the tradition of student management of the group is a vital part of the group's 121-year history.

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Glee Club executives estimate they accept about 15 per cent of the nearly 200 men who audition for the group every September. "Based on the rating the conductor gives the people that are trying out, the executive committee provisionally accepts a certain number of people from this audition pool," Wheadon said. The club then conducts a series of rehearsals and holds quartet trials, where candidates sing with old club members. Based on the second rating by the conductor, the executive committee makes final decisions on the choral hopefuls.

Old members have an edge over candidates in auditions every year. Wheadon said, because it is "necessary to have a base of singers who have been in the group before to work with."

Wheadon belives the group has a fairly good reputation on the professional music circuit. "That was the purpose of our tour--to reintroduce ourselves to old friends, and to get new ones," he said. "I believe the summer tour accomplished that purpose pretty well."

Dr. Loring Conant Jr. '61, president of the Harvard Glee Club Foundation, a 27-year-old organization of Glee Club alumni that provides financial and moral support to Harvard choral music, agreed that the Glee Club has a nationally-acclaimed reputation.

"Lonely Lonely Men of Harvard Set apart from all the rest, Solitary Men of Harvard All because we are the best, the best, the very best, We are indubitably the best."

"Our recordings still stand out as some of the best recordings in the orchestral choral lists," Conant said, adding "One way to gain prestige and exposure is to sing with a national orchestra, and that the Glee Club has succeeded in doing that for many years."

While current members effusively praise the musical blend and tone of the group achieved during the summer, they are hesitant to discuss the quality of the Glee Club sound now. The transition of conductors from Adams to Marvin at the beginning of the school year has left the club unsettled.

Two year ago, the Music Department denied Adams tenure, despite his overwhelming student support. Last spring, Dean Rosovsky established a student search committee composed of members of the Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Collegium Musicum to find a successor to Adams. After narrowing the field and inviting the frontrunners to Cambridge to conduct the three groups, the committee chose Jameson M. Marvin, who was then offered the position by the Music Department. Adams is presently studying conducting in Germany.

Marvin was at a conference of choral directors in St. Louis this weekend and could not be reached for comment.

While many club members declined to comment on the transition, some were willing to discuss the change. "Singing under F. John Adams was the most rewarding thing I did here," George S. Leone '79, who resigned from the group February 10, said. "He had a talent for bringing out the best in singers. We sang that music as well as it could be sung--and we could always tell when we did by John's response on stage," he added.

Club executives estimate 15 people have left the organization since Marvin took over in September. "Statistically, the number is higher than ever," Adam M. Finkel '79, Glee Club secretary, said. "We've personally tried hard to find everyone's reasons for dropping out... We're not in any trouble, though, and we're not hurting for people." Wheadon, however, said the number of dropouts this year is not excessive. "We generally accept a certain number of people keeping in mind that by spring tour we want to have a group of about 50," he explained.

Mark B. Slaughter '80, who was financial manager of the group until he resigned in the fall, said. "I feel we're singing less sophisticated music, less pleasureable music. I feel my time was wasted in the Glee Club. I just wanted to break away."

Dr. Loring Conant Jr. '61, president of the Harvard Glee Club Foundation, pointed out that in any transition process there are casualties. "This has been rougher than any transition period before because Jim [Marvin] is the first conductor hired from outside Harvard," Conant said. "To look at it objectively, Jim is an unwanted guest. If the students had had their choice, they would have kept John Adams. With that background, Jim certainly didn't have a red carpet that was just lush with welcome. It's shame, because he has had a wealth of musical experience."

Mark Oshima '82, a first-year club member, said some older members have had problems adjusting to the new conductor, but said Marvin is "a very good conductor, and he does know his music very well."

Oshima added, "The freshman have been getting along pretty well. There hasn't been as high an attrition rate among the freshmen as there was among the upperclassmen."

"It's not a question in anyone's mind that the quality of music the Glee Club is producing is at least at the same level as in years past," Wheadon said. "Alumni that have heard us this year have remarked that they've been very impressed that the Glee Club can produce such high quality music during what would be expected to be an uneasy period due to the transition."

"I know Jim has done a lot to improve our bad habits of singing under John, but it was never boring to be up there singing under John," Finkel said. "Jim's attitude is a lot more showman-y."

Conant agreed. "There are a lot of choral techniques that are just exciting that Jim is using. I think that when they are applied as a whole, the effect is going to be electifying."

"The Glee Club under Dr. Adams was treated to a series of very ambitious strivings for excellence," Leone said. "It was proud of that, and it's hard to adapt to a conductor with new standards. Marvin doesn't think we can be as good as we have been in the past. Whether he will take advantage of the potentials of the group remains to be seen."

Stan Mayslack will have to wait several years for the club's next U.S. tour to see for himself if the Glee Club is as good under Marvin as it was under Adams. That will give the club plenty of time to practice.