Yale College Glee Club Concert

“…all the popular college songs.”

Brief.

“A concert by the Yale Glee Club is to be given on Tuesday evening, at Steinway Hall. The programme consists mainly of college songs, and will be rendered by the students’ musical organization of Yale College, which has won for itself an agreeable reputation as an interpreter of college music. Mr. Elliott, a pianist of unusual merit will also be heard. The affair seems likely to be thoroughly enjoyable.”

“The Yale Glee Club appear to-morrow evening at Steinway Hall with a selection of their popular college songs. There will no doubt be a lively curiosity to hear them.”

“[Illeg…] remind the reader that the concert by the Yale College Glee Club occurs at Steinway Hall this night. Remembering a similar entertainment many months ago, we can promise, even to those persons in whose bosoms no recollection of boyhood days are awakened by the music sacred to Alma Mater, an evening of novel and real enjoyment.”

“The Yale College Glee Club had its promised concert at Steinway Hall last evening. The audience was numerous and kindly. The programme interpreted has already been rehearsed in this City. It consisted principally of college songs, given by a double quartet, which was not badly balanced, but which would assuredly have been richer in sound had a proportion as good as that of a single quartet occasionally listened to been maintained in its composition. ‘I-reel,’ ‘Bingo,’ ‘Peter Gray,’ ‘Menagerie,’ ‘Springfield Mountain’ and ‘Upidee,’ were the special pieces rendered. Mr. Elliott, a member of the Club, was the pianist, and played with a brilliancy that was enhanced by those rarest of accompaniments to the execution of most amateurs—correctness of reading and clearness of execution.”

“Nine young gentlemen, students of Yale College, are going about the country giving concerts, in which the chief feature is the selection of favorite college songs such as ‘Upidee,’ ‘Mary had a little lamb,’ the song of the Menagerie, and specimens of Tyrolean warbling. In a literary or even a humorous point of view, these songs are about on a par with the nonsense and rhymes of the blonde burlesquers at Niblo’s, or with the favorite negro minstrel melodies of the day. But they bring up pleasant and hilarious memories to everyone who remembers college days, and therefore have a reason for existing, which is quite sufficient.

“Last night the Yale Glee Club sang at Steinway Hall before an audience in which the Academy audience was largely represented. They are all amateurs, and sing like amateurs. Together they are very good and effective, while as soloists they are not at all up to an artistic standard. Several of their sentimental quartets—notably ‘Stars of the Summer Night’—were charmingly sung, and were worthy of the liberal applause bestowed upon them. The humors of ‘Upidee’ and songs of that ilk, however, seemed to specially delight the audience, and were frequently encored.

“The Yale Glee Club includes some excellent voices[,] notably a very deep organ-like basso, and a good baritone, the latter, however, lacking in cultivation. The tenors are high and sweet; altogether, the entertainment they offer is pleasant and enjoyable under any circumstances, and particularly so to those who look fondly back to Alma Mater.”

“A company of young gentlemen from Yale College, styling themselves the Yale Colleg Glee Club, gave a concert at Steinway Hall on Tuesday evening.

“This concertizing for money by collegians belongs to the new order of things. Ten years ago it made no part of a university course. Its novelty, however, would be in its favor rather than a detriment, provided the singing was good; but the spectacle that the nine young gentlemen made of themselves on the occasion to which we refer was a very melancholy one indeed. We sincerely trust that they know more about Latin and Greek than they do about music; otherwise there must be fearful rivalry for that prize of dulness [sic], the wooden spoon.

“After a varied experience in listening to male-voice singing, extending over a number of years, and including perhaps a hundred societies, American and German, and after giving careful thought to the subject, memory fails to recall anything quite so bad as this singing was. The young gentlemen, though calling themselves a Glee Club, really sang no gless, strictly speaking. In fact, an English glee would have been quite beyond the measure of their reach, as the moon is beyond the reach of little children who grasp toward it. What they attempted was some German part-songs, of a very low order of merit, intended to be sung without accompaniment, but sung by them with a pianoforte accompaniment, the sustaining power of which was probably the only thing that enabled them to get safely through to the end without a positive and mortifying failure. The thud of the pianoforte is always enough to destroy the beauty of male-voice singing, but it served as a sort of cover to the very wretched quality of this.

“Vogel’s waltz is really a very pretty composition when it is sung with grace and delicacy. It is a trifling and rather frivolous piece, but then it makes no pretension to be anything else. However, the collegians managed to strip it of what charm it did possess very completely. The difficulty with them, looked at from a musical point of view, was that their voices were of an inferior quality; that the first tenors were especially lacking in resonance; that they sang exceedingly out of tune; that they had a very raw and crude idea of light and shade, and of all the points that make up excellent male-voice singing; that what voices they had did not blend well together; that their time was faulty; and, in fact, that they were attempting the practice of an art of which they had not even mastered the rudiments.

“Besides the German part-songs, the young men sang a number of feeble and juvenile college songs, such as ‘Bingo Jeet,’ ‘Rig-a-jig, jig, and away we go,’ the ‘Menagerie,’ descriptive of the showman and the wild beasts, and the would-be-comic ballad of the man who was ‘scal-pi-ed by the cruel In-di-ans,’ & c. These are all very well at Yale. Their absurdity can be enjoyed of an evening under the college eims [sic], but they sound terribly feeble and witless in a large concert room, especially when their juvenility is not redeemed by good singing. The hall was about two-thirds filled, mostly with graduates of Yale, who came to recall old times, and wondered as they listened whether the singing was really as poor as that in their day. Let them take heart: it is hardly within the range of possibilities that it could have been.

“Save for the presence and encouragement of these alumni, who lent their applause for old association’s sake, the affair could have been a great fiasco. As it was, the young gentlemen escaped with more than their deserts, but it was an experiment that will hardly bear repetition. Let these young bachelors of music be content to howl their dismal and discordant ‘glees’ in future under cover of their alma mater, nor venture forth untutored and unfledged into the cold world.”

“[The New York Sun offered a few more derisive comments about the Yale Glee Club in their announcement for the upcoming Madrigal Society performance. See New York Sun announcement of 04/15/70 in the event entry of 04/21/70 – Madrigal Concert: 1st.]