Word: glees
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...major factor favoring Davison in his reform was the sober maturity of the veterans who returned from World War I impatient with the Glee Club's rowdiness. Another was the University Chapel Choir, for as Organist, he had control over repertoire. When at Christmas 1913 he introduced some Radcliffe singers into the choir, President Lowell warned him sternly not to do it again, but when the beautifully varied tone of a mixed chorus reappeared the following year, Lowell remained silent and thereafter supported Davison unswervingly...
...love of the choral masterpieces of the 16th and 17th centuries that he instilled in the choir proved the crucial factor in the transformation of the Glee Club. In 1919 a number of choir members independently of him ended the tie with the instrumental clubs and asked him to be director of the new Glee Club. That spring they toured The East and Middle West and were acclaimed the best amateur chorus in America...
...Glee Club was and immediate sensation, for the discovery that college boys could sing refined music so spiritedly mystified and delighted America. The French government invited them for a summer tour in 1921, and crowds packed Symphony Hall several times a year to hear them. A reviewer from the New York Herald Tribune babbled gleefully that the group had "sung things calculated to cause a fellow to run his eyes, hold down his head sidewise and kick to get something out of his ears." They sang with Fritz Kreisler, Pablo Casals and performed Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex at the Metropolitan...
...despite the fame "Doe" and his singers acquired, he continued to maintain that "we look on the Glee Club not primarily as an artistic organization doing an unusual stunt, but as an educational movement." The freak value of the Glee Club naturally did not last long, and by 1926 it was singing to a half-empty Symphony Hall. But it was still contributing just as much to the revival of choral singing, setting an example to the many college Glee Clubs that discarded their mandolins and took up Palestrina, Bach and Vaughn Williams...
...very flaws of the Glee Club's performances were directly related to Davison's predominantly educational aims. The club grew from 75 to 250 because he wanted to allow as many as possible to take part in it; to accommodate as many as possible and blend voices of varying qualities, he sought "a homogeneous mediocrity of tone." Such tone was not in itself a flaw of the group; but since it often resulted in an imbalance of bases, only restraint could compensate for their greater volume, and several sympathetic reviewers, including Olin Downes of the New York Times, remarked about...