THE PRESS

The positions of prominence long held by the gloe clubs of Yale, Harvard and Princeton have been challenged recently by the appearance in the same field of musical clubs from an ever increasing host of other universities. There are now approximately two hundred and fifty of these organizations which give excellent performances and provide keen competition for each other on the annual Chistmas and Easter trips which they all undertake. The older clubs have maintained their prestige only by striving for continual improvements in their concerts and by making their appeal to the general concert-going public in addition to the college alumni of the larger cities. Their programs have been expanded beyond the limits of the conventional group of college gloes and made to include classical numbers much more difficult and finished in the realms of male choral music. Harvard has even gone so far as to no longer limit membership in her glee club to undergraduates but in the quest of the most polished voices obtainable, has admitted many from the graduate schools. Yale has not gone to this extreme but has decidedly improved the general level of her program with the gradual introduction of more numbers of the classical type.

Having so much in common both in tradition and in modern tendency, it in unfortunate that the Yale and Harvard clubs do not come into contact except in the informal joint concert in the fall on the evening of the Yale-Harvard football game. Given at this time, the importance of the concert as a noteworthy attraction is somewhat overshadowed by other social activities, and the program is composed entirely of old glees and popular songs which are fitted for such an occasion. Since this does not provide an opportunity for a presentation of the best work of both clubs, would if not seem advisable to hold a joint concert in the winter or spring in which both clubs might take part in the note elaborate programs which they are capable of offering and which real music lovers would delight to here? Would this not be a more truly representative and worth-while type of concert for the joint effort of the glee clubs of Yale and Harvard?--Yale News, Sat., April 16.