Doc' Davison: Faith in Worthwhile Music

The man who took the "glee" out of Glee Club with the theory that "good music" is the best music will be honored next week by a series of concerts celebrating his seventieth birthday.

This tribute to Archibald T. Davison '06, James E. Ditson Professor of Music, is not merely a sentimental birthday gift; it is another credit to the man who has devoted 43 years to popularizing worthwhile music at Harvard and who now plans to retire at the year's end.

The basic philosophy that has characterized Davison's teaching career, which has appeared in his reformation of the Glee Club and throughout his theory of musical education, is best illustrated in a discussion of his earliest work, the Concord-Series of Song Books:

"The place where lasting music will be built is where the two great roads of popularity and of lasting beauty interest. In the pursuit of music, as in the acquirement of every form of artistic expression, we encounter the aesthetic paradox, that what we like first we seldom like best--that we prefer our second choice to our first.

Collaborates with Surette

"It would seem at first evident that the way to like music is to sing the music that you like, but it is not so. If you just sing the music that you like, you often get tired of it and find the you have burned the ground over and left nothing there to grow.

"The real way to grow the power of musical or any other sort of artistic appreciation is to live upon the edge of your taste . . ."

Davison's collaborator in arranging these song books was Thomas W. Surette '93 whom he, first met when asked to help organize a system of music training in the Boston public schools. Critics acclaimed this series as "revolutionizing the whole method of secondary school music."

In 1909, after earning his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. (the second in music ever awarded at Harvard) in less than six years, Davison settled down at the College as an instructor with vague notions of composing orchestral music. Encouraged by Dr. Karl Muck, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Davison composed his "Tragic Overture," an orchestral piece founded on Hawthorne's gruesome tale of Rappacini and the sacrifice of his daughter. Performed by the BSO, the overtime brought favorable reviews which praised Davison's "uncrring taste and exceeding skill in the handling of thematic material and the arrangement of orchestral color."

Such comments necessarily pointed toward a life-long career as a composer--except that the young instructor's interests had begun to change. "I began to realize that there already was so much beautiful music in the world that wasn't being played," he recalls. "Then I became interested in students and I saw what could be achieved if I could get them interested in worthwhile music instead of the usual ephemeral songs."

In 1910 Davison was appointed conductor of the Chapel Choir and the reformation began. Some of the choir boys who were also in the Glee Club began to like "Doc" and asked him if he would also take over the "coaching duties" of the Club.

The duties of a "professional coach" of the Glee Club were simply to train the members to sing such songs as "Down by the Stream Where I First Met Rebecca," and "Stein Song."

He accepted the position on the condition that he be allowed to do it without pay. The Glee Club was a semi-social club which held concerts mainly because of the dances that followed and which performed with the aid of the Banjo and Mandolin Clubs.

Polly Doodle All the Day

During a rehearsal shortly after he had become coach, Davison asked the members to try a little Mendelssohn piece called "Der Jagers Abschied." They did it "out of curosity," and they liked it. After Mendelssohn came Bach and Palestrina and finally Stravinsky.

By 1919 the club officers decided there was not enough time during rehearsals to sing "Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day" and determined to convert the Club into a genuinely ambitious choral organization. Davison agreed with the plan to separate from the instrument clubs and the big switch from "the Bullfrog on the Bank" to Bach was made.

The first reactions to the move were varied with some critics and alumni applauding Davison's guidance and others calling him an imposter, stating that the Glee Club was now a schola cantorum, devoting itself too seriously to ambitious music.

The decisive victory for Davison's new Glee Club came in 1921 when the French premier invited the Club to give concerts in France. The unprecedented European tour of France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany established the Club's worldwide reputation and earned Davison the Paume Academique medal from the French government.

Locally the Club gained prestige performing in concerts with the Boston Symphony and soloists Fritz Kreisler and Frieda Hempel. Meanwhile the Boston critics began to applaud Davison's new reformation in musical education. In 1926 Davison published "Music Education In America" which substantiated the fact that his achievements were not just "unusual stunts."

The book again stated Davison's old philosophy of music in schools: "The really worthwhile products of music education . . . are a love for the best and a will to participate in it."

That year Randall Thompson '20 announced that, according to a survey of all college music departments in the association of American colleges, "over a million copies of Dr. Davison's song arrangements in sheet music have been sold", and that bound volumes of these arrangements had found their way into 300 colleges.

In addition to this, Richard C. Cabot '90, at an address at the 75th anniversary celebration of the Glee Club, announced that 'public school music, church music, and the music produced when people sing round a piano at home--all these are now strongly influenced by the "Concord Series", for which Dr. Davison and Mr. Surette are responsible . . . bound volumes of this series have been sold in Switzerland, Mexico, Korca, England, Ireland, Palestine, and Canada."

Protests against the new Glee Club arose for the last time around 1926 when it refused to sing in the annual intercollegiate Glee Club contest because it considered the contest's prize song, which all competitors had to sing, "inferior music" and "sentimental mush."

Membership Increases

Commented Overseer Thomas W. Slocum '90: "I would rather have one sportsman than a thousand yellow-streaked Carusos."

The song, entitled "Lamp in The West" with music by Horatio W. Parker and words by Ella Higginson, began in this vein:

"Venus has lit her lamp

low in the purple west,

Breathing soft and mellow light

upon the sea's full breast."

Davison himself remained as popular as ever. The club's membership expanded from 40 in 1911 to more than 200 in 1926 primarily due to the personality of its conductor.

"Watch him as with his quick step he walks upon the concert platform and begins to lead the chorus. He is electric with energy and controlled enthusiasm . . . Listen to him as he talks to the men between pieces . . . They follow his every motion, listening to his every word . . . It is the old, old story of the power of personality." So eulogized a Boston critic.

Not the least of Davison's achievements was the subtle manner in which he managed to combine Radcliffe's Choral Society with his own Glee Club. After arranging a program with Dr. Muck, leader of the BSO, and Mrs. Gallison, Radcliffe conductor, in 1917 the Harvard-Radcliffe's combined choruses presented Brahm's "Schicksalslied" with the orchestra at Symphony Hall. It proved to be the first of a series of many similar combination performances.

Davison, in fact, recalls one of his most gratifying teaching experiences from his work with the Annex chorus. "My interest," he says," has always been in the student that couldn't, but wanted to. I remember there were once two sisters who had indescribable delight at being permitted to take part in chorus rehearsals and I didn't see how it was possible to keep them out of the Club. The only trouble was, of course, both were monotones and each had her own note.

"Even then I couldn't stop them from singing when we performed with the Boston Symphony so I found a place for them under the organ pipes where the tones were completely deafening. I'm sure Koussevitsky didn't even realize they were there. They sang in no less than four major choral works with the Boston Symphony, without deleterious effect."

Hardly any ex-Glee Club member who sang under Davison can forget his manner of conducting. In his pamphlet "The Reformation of the Glee Club" published in 1922, Frederick Lewis Allen '12 described a typical Davisonian rehearsal: "As you slip into a seat at the rear of the room, you hear, cutting through the deep, swelling tones of the chorus, Davison's sharp voice: 'Now's your chance! That's it! Good! First rate! This is a bad place; look out for it! That's the way, basses! Eyes! Eyes!'"

It is undoubtedly this very enthusiasm as a conductor which inspired Davison's book "Choral Conducting" which appeared in 1940. "Zeal for fine music," wrote Davison, "depends not at all upon education, musical or otherwise. It grows out of an experience of the satisfaction that springs only from the association with the highest manifestations of musical art.

Woodworth is Successor

"To initiate this experience, to cultivate it, to enlighten it with technical resource, these are the duty, but still more, the privilege of the conductor."

Then in 1935 Davison chose his longtime assistant, G. Wallace Woodworth '24, to succeed him as the Club's conductor. The two had met in 1920 when Woodworth, a freshman, tried out unsuccessfully as a singer for the Club and was taken on as an accompanist. The retirement, however, by no means ended Davison's musical career.

Immediately after becoming conductor emeritus, he began, with Donald Grout, now a professor at Cornell University, to assemble a general course in in music history which since has become the most popular music course at Harvard. Its enrollment averages almost 400 students each year.

The course, now taught with recordings of opera, orchestral and choral works, is perhaps one of the most pleasant to sit through. For example, Davison describes Schumann's meeting with Johannes Brahms in this fashion: "'Guten Morgen, I am glad to know you. Won't you come in?' The two moved into the living room where the visitor's eyes immediately rested on the piano. Schumann hastened to ask, 'Won't you please play something of your own composition?'

"Without more encouragement the gauche musician sat down and began to play his C major Sonata. Before he had proceeded far, his host cried, 'Walt, Gott im Himmel, Clara must listen to this!'"

Davison's honors have been too varied and numerous in past years to include in a list here. Four of his most significant, appropriately enough, come from universities. He has been awarded honorary degrees in music from Oxford, Williams, and Harvard Universities, and he has been presented with the first and only Glee Club medal in the history of Harvard University.

Perhaps the best example of exactly what it is that has inspired his 43 years of outstanding work as an instructor at Harvard can be drawn from the pages of his book, "Choral Conducting." This is, in essence, the credo by which "Doc" has lived and taught.

"He has the thrill of companionship with eager men and women whose joy it is to create beauty by breathing life and significance into music which, without the exercise and skill of their attention, would remain cold symbols on the printed page; to have a part with them in the accomplishment of high artistic ends arrived at only after enthusiastic cooperation and painstaking labor; to see them grow in sensitiveness to the refinements of performance and in the appreciation of what is true and enduring in art--I cannot believe many professions have greater rewards.