The Music Box

In an outstanding performance last evening in Sanders Theatre, the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral, directed by G. Wallace Woodworth, roused a rather stodgy audience out of its lethargy by the sheer brilliance of several of the compositions, which ranged from Weelkes and Allegri to Holst and Harvard's Archibald T. Davison.

"Doc" Davison's anthem, "O Gladsome Light," was written in memory of Gustav Holst, who died last year, and was a personal friend of Dr. Davison, and through him, of the Harvard Glee Club. Somewhat reminiscent of Holst in its harmonic treatment, this anthem, sung by the Glee Club alone, built up an intensity of feeling which blazed out into a magnificent climax in the last verse.

Matching this piece was Walt Whitman's "Dirge for two Veterans" set to music by Holst, conducted by "Doc" with lightness and precision which it is his gift to draw from his singers without any sacrifice of emotional force.

The Radcliffe Choral Society's singing of the delightfully naive, yet technically intricate madrigal, "The Nightingale," of Weelkes, and in the "Arkansas Traveler," more than made up for a rather drab and mechanical interpretation of a Gluck chorus from "Orpheus."

If anyone carps at details, such as too covered a tone and often an exaggerated clipping of the syllables--faults that are begotten of over-emphasis on correct principles of chorus singing--the objector must be reminded that it is no small virtue to turn out so fine a performance of pieces as different as Allegri's "Misere" and the coronation scene chorus from Moussorgsky's "Boris Godounov."