RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE

For some time publicly conducted criticisms of the Harvard Glee Club have been limited to concert reviews by professional writers, and the alumni have not yet expressed opinions as to the type of music now being sung. The cry is taken up once again, however, in a letter to the Alumni Bulletin written by C. E. Bacon '95, who likens the present Glee Club to a German Manner Gesang Verein devoting itself seriously to ambitious music. For this reason it is advocated that the Glee Club surrender its little to some other group of Harvard singers who will represent more closely the gay, gleesome choristers of the Nineties, with their frivolous glees of wine, women, and song.

The writer has neglected the fact that in the Instrumental Clubs there is a vocal division, which has a repertoire of music of a more popular and convivial type. And the fact that this group has been of a small character is an indication, in part, of the manner in which the tastes of the college man who sings have changed since the era of torchlight parades. A Glee Club, in the accepted meaning of the word, moreover, is not necessarily a group wedded to music of a gleesome character.

In Considering the present Harvard Glee Club, however, the more fact that trials for new men attracted a group of 175 singers in addition to the numbers of veterans indicates not only the approval of present day college men for music of a serious character, but also the extent to which the Glee Club represents the desires of the singers included in the University membership. And indeed it is ridiculous to assert that the Glee Club is not linked with the clubs of other years, simply because the trend and the energies of the men involved have been bent in regions of highest musical thought, resulting in achievements that have set the standards for college singers everywhere.

The change in feeling among university men today is self explanatory. Men who are accustomed to the best standards in orchestral music, as exemplified by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, quite naturally eagerly support an organization representing equally high standards of choral performance. The Harvard Glee Club, instead of being an unruly successor of traditional musical standards, is in fact merely providing to the university man's manifest satisfaction a higher order of music than was possible in the days of those who now decry it.