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...least--love. The Bernie Krieger they know is not so much the talented pianist or the gifted sightreader as he is the subject of a sort of "fable of ridicule." Krieger is the central character in dozens of comic stories of bumbling and outrageous behavior. "Sure," says a recent Glee Club graduate, "I know lots of Bernie stories. But are you really sure you want to print them...
Bernie Krieger gesticulating madly at the piano during the Yale game in '55. Bernie Krieger calmly eating the carnation off the lapel of a fellow Glee Clubber in San Antonio during the Club's U.S. tour. Bernie Krieger stumbling into a ladies room in Omaha and crying out, "It's all right--I'm a doctor!" This is the Krieger of Harvard legend. And if you haven't heard one of these stories, he will gladly fill you in on the details. "The best person on Bernie Krieger is Bernie Krieger," says Archie C. Epps, III, dean of students...
Krieger can, for instance, tell you just who it was who came up with what is now his universal vocal community nickname: Bernie the Roach. He can tell you which member of the Harvard Krokodiloes (in the early '70s still a subset of the Glee Club) thought of rewriting the lyrics to "yo ho" during which rehearsals in which room in Sever. (The produce of that effort appears elsewhere on the page.) He will even tell you he doesn't mind the nickname. "I have never been sure," he will tell you, "whether the roach they referred to was something...
...nicknames, the songs, the stories would seem to indicate a stronger fondness for Krieger than many of the undergraduate singers are willing to admit. Krieger is for them primarily a social focus rather than a musical or managerial one. The chronicle of any Harvard singer's Glee Club or Collegium career is bound to include a few very amusing stories about Bernie the Roach...
...KRIEGER APPROACHES it differently. His fondest memories of the undergraduate singers will not be of their misadventures on tour or of their behavior during rehearsals, but of their art. Ask Bernie Krieger what his best times with the Glee Club have been, and he will spend most of his time talking about specific concerts--singing a Sanders concert under Nadia Boulanger, performing tudor music, music "in the halls for which it was written," singing under Bernstein for Pope Paul VI. There are other memories, of course: private conversations with members of the Czechoslovakian chorus, watching the sunrise with other Glee...