Music at Harvard '71-'72

Despite the Harvard Music Department's benign neglect, musical activity in Cambridge survives. Last spring was particularly frenetic when half a dozen major works were presented in the space of eight weeks. This year should be as busy.

The Harvard Glee Club and its associated groups have been reorganized for a one-year trial period. The Radcliffe Choral Society has been dissolved: in its place is the new Collegium Musicum, a select mixed ensemble of seventy singers. The Glee Club will no longer perform with a Radcliffe organization though it will continue cooperating with outside groups. The creation of a mixed chorus of uncommon quality will ease the tensions that came from having two single-sex systems. All the details have been carefully attended to: rehearsals are the same evening for both groups allowing men to participate in mixed and male chorus.

Harvard has a long tradition of good singing under the legendary Doc Davison, and Elliot Forbes. Current conductor F. John Adams has scheduled an ambitious start for the Collegium; their first concert is of works from Byrd and Bach to Brahms and Debussy. In the spring they will join the Boston Symphony for one of the new Spectrum Concerts: religious music of Bach, Del Tredici, Josquin, and Messiaen. Adams has also planned an informal chanson and madrigal session on the banks of the Charles.

For less skilled singers there is the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus. David Smith has solved the boredom problem in Handel oratorios: Israel in Egypt is mostly choruses. Next term will be devoted to a wide range of pieces more technically demanding than the Handel. As for Harvard's forgotten children, the grad students, they too have vocal group--the Graduate Chorale. Gerald Moshell, conducting for his third year, will continue to emphasize twentieth-century repertoire. John Stewart has been commissioned by the Grad Chorale for this year's piece by a Harvard student.

Memorial Church has always been a big contributor to Cambridge music. John Ferris, University Organist, has put together an intriguing schedule in addition to the usual Choir offering at morning and Sunday services. In three programs, the Choir will present the unusual Distler Todtentanz, Bach Cantata No. 39, and the Schuetz Weinachtshistorie. The Schuetz was done last Christmas at the Busch-Reisinger Museum and is a worthwhile, moving work. Since this composer is a favorite of John Ferris's, the performance will likely be quite good. The same prediction holds for the two-day Schuetz Festival in the spring. Mem Church programs--morning prayer anthems to the traditional carol service--are almost always worth attending.

The Church-sponsored recital series began two weeks ago with organist Anton Heiller. On November 17 the series continues with Edward Tarr, considered by many the world's best baroque trumpet player. Keyboard music is accessible weekly at the Harvard Organ Society's popular Thursday noon recitals in the Busch-Reisinger. The museum's beautiful three-manual Flentrop organ is perfect for baroque music--and the short recitals are a welcome respite on a busy day.

Orchestral playing has a big part in the constant musical activity of Cambridge. Largest of the student organizations is the eighty-five piece Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. Even the HRO is changing: in a burst of self-assertion, the orchestra has done away with the concerto contest. In its place is a concerto open-rehearsal, leaving more time for non-accompaniment orchestral playing. With Hindemith and Mahler on the opening concert October 29. Professor James Yannatos is presenting a different style from last year's HRO fare. The orchestra plans to work with the Loeb Drama Center in the spring.

The group to watch this season is the Bach Society, a chamber orchestra of some forty players. Nils Vigeland's talent, taste and personality make him the most exciting musical force at Harvard. Given any kind of support by his orchestra he will provide an extraordinary season of unusual works. Only one familiar piece is in the first program of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wolf. While the HRO has abolished soloists, the Bach Society will use them in every program. A special American Music concert will feature student compositions. But the real "jump off the deep end" (in Vigeland's words) will be a complete Stravinsky Pulcinella in January.

The larger vocal ensembles, Mem Church, and the two orchestras are not all Harvard has to offer. The popular Gilbert & Sullivan Players perform twice a year: Lowell House and Leverett House sponsor opera in the spring. All of these groups--along with Charlie Kletzsch's indefatigable Dunster musicians and their midnight clavichord concerts--are more or less permanent. Other groups come and go as members drift to and from the blessed attractions of political activism.