Jarrett House North

Over the weekend I did some curation of the Virginia Glee Club history wiki, pulling together some previously posted images into new categories and scanning a few large format posters. You can now see all the posters and program covers that we’ve scanned in one place.

Looking at all of them in order, I’m reminded of my own role in the evolution of the graphic look of the Glee Club as expressed through its posters, programs, and tape jacket covers. From about late 1991 through late 1993/early 1994, I was either the “typesetter” (aka Quark Xpress jockey) or designer of all the Glee Club’s printed matter, and it’s interesting now to remember that we really had a firm (if amateur) idea about the direction in which we were going, graphically speaking. And looking at it in the context of what came before, it’s interesting just how different that direction was from what the Glee Club’s visual identity had been before.

I think it’s fair to say that, based on the evidence that has survived, that there was really no distinctive graphic identity for the Glee Club prior to the mid-1960s. While it’s hard to say for sure–posters and other large printed ephemera are rarer in the historian’s archives than programs–all the printed matter I have before 1965 is simple, generally typeset, and consistent, probably in a University “house” style. This started to change once Donald Loach took over leadership of the group. As early as Christmas 1965, and maybe earlier, the glyph to the right started to appear on Glee Club printed matter. Designed in the International style, the icon was clear and recognizable, and put a new graphic element into the Club’s printed materials. The “Y conductor” icon appears often through the 1960s and 1970s, most strikingly as the central design element in the poster for the 1971 Concert on the Lawn. But it was not used consistently, and in fact by the mid-1970s had largely disappeared in favor of more visual graphic elements intended to reinforce the theme of each individual concert: woodcuts for concerts of medieval and Renaissance music, sheet music for a concert of Viennese works, silhouettes of Jefferson and images of the Lawn for University functions.

By the 1980s, a more hand drawn style had begun to emerge. The iconic Christmas wreath, as shown on the cover of the Christmas program from 1982, is colorful, hand drawn, and generally less formal than the 1970s programs. The Kickoff Concert cover from 1988 is even less formal, looking sketchy and even cartoony. Both of these designs would persist into the early 1990s, and both were around when I began as “computer dude” for the Club in the fall of 1991. While I didn’t save the posters or programs, I remember this design for the Kickoff Concert being in use in both 1990 and 1991, and certainly the Christmas wreath stayed throughout this period.

When John Liepold came on board as a fresh new conductor in 1991, he took a hands on approach with the design of programs, letterhead, and other printed matter. He probably was the designer of the distinctive Virginia Glee Club letterhead–Palatino bold, with the word “the” in small caps, a thick rule beneath, always either black on white or white on black–and its use and design was the one consistent rule graphically during those years, along with the use of Palatino as the standard font. The intention was to be more visually bold and to get our name out more, and–given the limited typographic palette available in 1991 even on a Macintosh–I think it was pretty successful.

My contribution, other than general typographic contributions, was to add more photographic and representational imagery to the mix. Some of the posters I produced were simple retreads of designs that were already in use when I came on board (the Finals Concert poster is in this camp) but others were complete redesigns. The Kickoff Concert, which was my first poster the year I was vice president, was my first target, and I decided to go with an image from the archives that would be visually bold, memorable, and tied into the history of the University. That I happened to see this photo in the Special Collections archives a few months after seeing this poster for the first time was a happy graphical accident.  We used it again in 1993 but I don’t think the poster reappeared since then. But the basic themes–striking imagery, ties to the history of the University to reinforce our claim as the oldest musical group on Grounds, fun–were to appear again in other posters. (I wrote about this poster once before a few years ago.)

The other major redesign I presided over was the Christmas concert. Wanting to freshen the wreath, I asked Craig Fennell to help me design a replacement, and he obliged with the “quarter-wreath” treatment we used on the 1992 and 1993 Christmas concert materials. I think this design was less punchy than some of the other posters we did, but the overall effect was still good.

The other contribution I made was the “letterpress homage poster”–posters that mimicked presentation forms and styles from the letterpress era. Inspired by an English playbill poster that had been recreated in the Colonial Williamsburg printing office with honest to goodness movable type, I designed three posters in this style: a poster for the joint U Singers/Glee Club Messiah Sing-In in the style of an 18th century English playbill, a Lawn Concert flier in the style of a 19th century advertisement, and the poster for the Spring Concert in 1994. Of the three, the Messiah one is probably my favorite as graphic art–clean, dramatic, colorful, and correct use of the long “s”–but the Lawn Concert flier was probably the most effective at getting bodies to the show. Something about the little Porte Crayon student seems to strike a chord with viewers even today.

I’m sadly short on examples of work after I left–hope to scan some this weekend–though I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Craig Fennell, Matt Vanderzalm, and others kept the artistic streak of our poster work alive through at least the late part of the 1990s.

The UVA Magazine posted a great collection of stories from women at the University of Virginia. One area that they didn’t dive into was the history of women’s choral music at the University.

The earliest reference we have to women of the University community participating in Glee Club performances comes in 1944, when a “Madrigal Group” made up of women from the University joined the Glee Club in its fourth annual Christmas concert. The Madrigal Group lasted two seasons, disbanding after the end of World War II, and except for a brief reinstatement in the 1950s there is no further word about a women’s choir until the formation of the University of Virginia Women’s Chorus in 1974. So while the Glee Club collaborated in virtually every home concert with a women’s chorus, they always had to reach outside the University community for their collaborations.

It would be great if any of the original members of that Madrigal Group could share their stories. According to the December 15, 1944 “College Topics,” they included Kathryn Bell, Barbara Bishop, Phyllis Black, Joyce Blume, Adele Chauvenet, Mary Costello, Virginia Cummings, Nancye Jane Davis, Renee Gretcke, Barbara Harris, Mary Lamb, Jeanne Mills, Margaret Neale, Betty Pritchett, Roberta Richman, Catherine Spencer, Doris Spradlin, Mae Thacker, Virginia Ware, Anna Witt, Mary Broyles, Dudley Burruss, Priscilla Calmer, Calise Chauvenet, Mary L. Forbes, June Kittleson, Betty Newton, Nancy Spicer, Patsy Walker, and Mary Wheat.

The official poster for next month’s Virginia Glee Club 140th anniversary/reunion weekend has been released. Looking forward to seeing many of you there.

My travel plans have just firmed up–I’ll be driving down on the 17th (um, does anyone in the DC area have a couch I can crash on that Thursday night?), then heading into Charlottesville on Friday for a research day in the Special Collections Library. From then on, it’s the reunion activities. And it should be a lot of fun.

On the eve of the 140th anniversary of the Virginia Glee Club, whose founding date (1871) makes it one of the seven oldest collegiate glee clubs in the United States, it feels curmudgeonly to point out the relative lack of hard evidence for the 1871 founding of the Club, and the abundance of pointers to other prospective founding dates—1886? 1893? 1914? What about dates before 1871? Each has some degree of validity as a starting point for the messengers of harmony, love, and brotherhood. So, curmudgeonly as it feels, we should at least take a peek at the alternatives.

First, the official date of 1871 has been claimed since at least the 1970s, when the liner notes for A Shadow’s on the Sundial quoted an 1871 issue of the Virginia University Magazine as saying that the men of the Cabell House had made “great efforts, and we understand tolerably successful ones, to form a Glee Club.” On the basis of this description, assuming that the founding of the group happened in 1871 seems reasonable. To get forward to modern times, though, you have to connect the dots across a series of other groups that called themselves Glee Clubs but had no institutional connections between them, starting with the Claribel in 1874, through the Glee Club in which Woodrow Wilson sang in 1879-1880, and on and on. Let’s take a quick look at some of the other dates that have claims for posterity:

1886: In the early 20th century, the Glee Club looked back to this year as the year of its founding. Harry Rogers Pratt’s Glee Club counted 1935-1936 as their 50th anniversary year and celebrated it with a tour to New York as well as a 50th anniversary concert, held 75 years ago tomorrow. But no historical record remains to tell us what happened in 1886 save a single mention of a Glee Club tour in the Magazine, and that reference makes it sound as though the Club had been around for a while.

1893: The birth of the Glee Club (actually, the Glee, Mandolin, and Banjo Clubs) as a group that toured beyond the University precincts. Their six city tour in January-February 1894 resulted in press in the Atlanta Constitution among others. But there appears to be continuity between this group and its 1891-1892 predecessor, so while 1893-1894 was an important turning point for the Club it would be inappropriate to call it a founding date.

1914: After the Club disbanded in 1912-1913, it re-formed after a brief hiatus under A. L. Hall-Quest. This is one of the first few firm dates attested outside of the pages of College Topics, as it appears in Philip A. Bruce’s History of the University of Virginia. We can trace continuous activity of the Glee Club forward from this date, even through both World Wars; 1914 thus stands as a significant milestone in the life of the group.

So 1914 is the latest date that we should think about in terms of the (re-)formation of the Glee Club. But is there an earlier date than 1871? Would you believe two?

1870. A full 11 months before the Virginia University Magazine famously wrote decrying the lack of musical clubs, it was writing about … the Glee Club! Albeit satirically: “The [Glee Club], we are told, has succeeded in procuring most of the fragments of an ‘ante-bellum’ violoncello, and hopes are entertained of their ultimate union.” Apparently they also mistook rain for bouquets. But there was a glee club at the University before February of 1870, and it was well established enough to be called “the Glee Club.” And then there’s…

1861. Cited in several places, including the Shadow’s on the Sundial liner notes and Barringer’s 1906 University of Virginia: Its History, this was apparently a serenading group that came out of the student housing on Carr’s Hill, just as the Cabell House Men were themselves a boardinghouse group. Traditionally we have considered the 1861 group a “predecessor” and not part of Glee Club history; separated not only by ten years but also by the Civil War from the “official” group, the Carr’s Hill Glee Club might as well have been a century before.

So where, after all, does this leave us? Perhaps with this thought: If we are to accept the gaps in the Glee Club’s history after the 1871 date, should we not extend the founding date to 1870? Perhaps not all the way to 1861, but absent any other information, it seems as though the Club referenced in 1870 is the same as the one in 1871.

Or, perhaps, we should leave well enough alone, and leave traditions where they stand, and accept that, when you are tracing the foundation of a group of students, one beginning point is as good as the next.

All I know is that I’ve got a definite research agenda for when I head back to Charlottesville before the reunion. I’ve got to find that January 1871 Virginia University Magazine, and any other old records I can.