INTRODUCTION
One doesn’t discuss family in strictly objective language. That was the gist of
the opening paragraph in Norma Condee’s wonderful history of the State College
Choral Society’s first twenty-five years. She wrote, in 1973/74, as a charter
member of the Society, as maybe the only soprano/alto/tenor in its history (and
certainly its only pregnant tenor!), and as a uniquely qualified Historian
within the Society. Well, the Music Director of the Society for the duration of
the quarter century since Bym penned her History promises exactly the same lack
of objectivity! In fact, so clear was it that the first quarter century could
not be any better documented that part one of this fifty-year history will
consist of an exact photocopy of Bym’s work. There is something very earthy in
seeing the fruits of Bym’s mind expressed through her own typewriter. I can’t
begin to count the number of personal notes I’ve received from that typewriter
over the past three decades, but I can tell you I still have nearly every
one—they’re just too precious to discard!
So for the next several pages I invite you to
enter into the inner workings of one of our community’s artistic treasures
through the eyes and voice of a charter member who I’m happy to report is still
singing in the Society in year fifty! Thereafter, we’ll shift perspective and
give a conductor’s-eye view of the years that have raced by since 1974. The
participants’ lists will be longer; the range of repertoire will be more
extensive; the organizational structure of the Society will be more
sophisticated. But I am happy to report that the impulse which gave life to this
Society in 1949, the inner fire which led central Pennsylvania women and men to
come together under the tutelage of their founder Martha Ramsey to make great
music together, still glows in its current singers’ souls. In 1999 it would be
difficult to imagine State College (and central Pennsylvania) without the State
College Choral Society. May it ever be so!
– Douglas Miller, Music Director, 1971-
The First Quarter Century
“I just want to come one night a week and sing”
“What in the world are we going to do about tenors?”
“What are the women going to wear for the concert?”
“Money?”
FOREWORD
“The State College Choral Society, 1949-1973/74:
An Impersonal History of 25 years of Progress.” But no; we are too diverse, too
ornery, too individualistic, and each year, although it will often resemble
other years, is unique. An impersonal account it also cannot be: although I have
consulted many members, old, new, former, present, and have incorporated (and
necessarily omitted) much of what I’ve heard, this still has been seen through
my own experience, that of a charter member who has continued, and plans to
continue as long as time grants. I have seen almost every nook and cranny of the
Society’s activities over these years. I am currently the Historian, and in that
capacity was asked to put together the story and lists. You wait long enough,
you become the Historian of any group you belong to.
A few words about procedures; but first about my
hope. I hope that all of you will gain pleasure in thinking back in joy and love
(and it will be mixed with pain, but I don’t wish it there—it just always is);
will think back to musical pleasures and friends you may have lost track of. It
has been an extraordinary 25 years of music for everyone who has chosen to sing
along with us.
Procedures
The listings are self-explanatory. Markings
indicate things I consider to be of importance or interest, such as names of
charter members who participated in our first choral concert. I’ve tried to
trace the movements or people within the various groups (Society to Orchestra,
for example). Of necessity, all these names have had to be taken from the
printed programs, and this will account for some infelicities: people who sang
with us, but dropped out before the concert will not be listed unless I happened
by chance to remember them. Names are sometimes misspelled in those programs; I
have spelled them exactly as they appear (or have picked the most likely variant
if there are successively two) unless I have personal knowledge to the contrary.
What we have sung is listed both chronologically and by composer. I urge
everyone to read these lists; they unlock many memories. It is especially
interesting to see how many members of families participate (we’ve often been a
family activity) although one can’t always assume that all those Browns or all
those Martins are related.
OURSELVES—25 YEARS
How did we start? With and by Eve, not Adam. The
Music Section of the Women’s Club had a little chorus which performed Brahms’
Liebeslieder Waltzes and Martha Ramsey directed it. She was a most
remarkable woman. It’s impossible to describe her to those who didn’t know her,
and impossible to forget her, if you did. Many loved her, and probably just as
many were irritated or infuriated at her; more than occasionally they were the
same people. She was bursting with the joy of music, and what she may have felt
of the pain of it, she was able to keep to herself. No one can forget her
standing in front of us saying “When I get to heaven, I hope they’ll let me sing
all four or five parts of the Bach B Minor Mass at one time, and all SIX
of the ‘Sanctus.’” At Martha’s memorial service those of us who sang (or didn’t
sing the Society sang pretty badly that day. I wish we’d sung better, but there
were too many in the choir loft with more Kleenex than voice in evidence), WE
knew that indeed she was already hard at it, because no one could say NO to
Martha. A society such as ours is only as good as its leader, and Martha led us
with an uncompromising, single-minded and very fierce purpose We were going to
sing Bach, beginning at the top with the B Minor Mass, with all our
hearts and souls and minds, as well as our voices, and we were going to love it
as she did. It is fitting that our 25th anniversary concert in the spring of
1974 presents Bach’s B Minor Mass, and that our earlier joint concert
with the State College Symphony should include something by Brahms: his
Schicksalslied.
Bach without Adam, or by a women’s chorus? Well,
no, of course not. The Liebeslieder group had had too much fun to break
up, and Martha had been thinking about a community chorus for some time. So they
invited some more men to join them, and decided to incorporate officially. The
first concert was presented in St. Paul’s Methodist Church on December 4, 1949,
and as I have said, the listings show which people participated. Dorothea
Roscoe, the Society’s first accompanist, played some organ solos as well, and we
were officially the State College Choral Society as we opened the Christmas
season’s festivities. It is interesting that in our 24th year we
returned to the idea of making a joyous opening to the Christmas season when we
launched the annual Christmas Madrigal Dinners. We had a party after this first
concert at the University Club on College Avenue, with everyone putting a
quarter in the plate on the table to pay for it. We had collection plates at the
Church too for people to donate towards the costs of the concert. Concert costs,
despite one’s best efforts, are always vastly more than the audience realizes.
But collection plates never seem to amount to much (ministers among these
readers will laugh hollowly) .One year, many years later, in a fit of pique and
financial desperation, we DID average out the donations against the audience to
see exactly how we came out. It was one of our best and most successful concerts
in the High School auditorium, standing room only, and the Big Payoff averaged
11½¢
per person. In 1949 dues were set at $6 per person, to cover rehearsal room
rental and same concert expenses. They have been raised since then, but never
cover more than a fraction of costs; it is only too painfully obvious that
prohibitively high dues will eliminate the freshest and youngest voices. Martha
origna1ly envisioned the concert as a community Christmas-season festival, to
include same Community participation from our audience. Although her husband
was connected with the University, she was firmly oriented towards town
activities, and wanted the concert to enfold as many people as could be
enfolded, each to the extent of his ability and desire. To this end she also
formed a group to sing and play in the choir loft (the Society sat on the front
platform). To this, the Chorale Choir and Players, came singers who could not
spare a regular evening a week, but who loved to sing; often these were children
and spouses of Society members. Often whole families would join the Chorale
Choir (see the listings); young people who played the recorder, flute, or oboe,
or even scraped at a violin joined them. As we would sing through the
Christmas Oratorio for example, the Choir responded to us with chorales from
the balcony, and the audience was encouraged to join in by having the chorale
music printed in the programs. The concert had begun with trumpets and trombones
in the church tower playing these same chorales, much as is done at the
Bethlehem Bach Festival.
I go into all this detail because it was our
first concert, because I would like to recall to you (or tell the younger or
newer members) what we were first like. I myself was a young pregnant tenor, and
that fact may serve to illustrate the unusual nature of our choral group right
from the start. The worldwide shortage of tenors, plus my previous knowledge of
the music we were singing, had dictated that my mezzo-soprano voice should sing
that year where it and I didn’t like singing; we didn’t otherwise know “what we
were going to do about tenors.” I stood with the altos next to the tenors, and
my soon-to-be daughter Nancy was decently hidden in the folds of tile choir
robes that we angrily voted by a narrow majority to have the women wear that
year. You will begin to recognize the relevance of the four opening quotes.
But what fun we had and how much we loved it. We
were a community group in every way, including our sometimes amateurish sound.
While I think and hope we lost the latter somewhere along the way, we have
always kept the former. Later in this account, in one of several asides, I will
mention some interesting statistics concerning just how much of a cross-section
we were and are.
We grew in strength and ability as the years
passed. Children grew up and joined the Society or the orchestra out of the
Chorale Choir. Singers, especially some of the men in the Chorale Choir, found
that they did, after all, have the time for regular rehearsals. Altos migrated
in and out of the tenor section as the shortage of tenor voices waned, waxed,
waned, but never ceased (I left and never came back to it; I DID became a
soprano one year, again under duress, but a tenor nevermore) .The chorus
solemnly caucused each year on what the women would wear, and abided however
sullenly with the majority vote. We rolled up another first (among many) after
my pregnant-tenor ship: Dr. Patricia Farrell, currently in charge of the
University’s Affirmative Action Office, became the first female member of The
Trumpeters, that group up there in the church tower. She played first trombone.
Actually, participating in this courageous group took, in addition to musical
skills and gutty courage (what is so audible, after all, as a mistake by a solo
brass instrument?), a good head for heights. In those days, from the place where
The Trumpeters stood in the tower, there was a straight drop through the plaster
ceiling onto the heads of an unsuspecting audience, should a trumpeter step too
far one way or another off a narrow footway, while trumpeting.
Meanwhile, in another part of the country, a
young singer, teacher and chorus-master named Raymond Brown, lead baritone with
Baltimore’s Hilltop Opera Company, was dashing from roles in Mozart and Massenet
to his television program extolling National Bohemian; and a VERY young soprano
named Douglas Miller was pulling up his socks for the rigors of the first day of
school.
But Martha was a pro, with a pro’s training, and
no one with professional qualifications likes to continue in one’s life’s work
without receiving a pro’s pay, be it ever so token. It became obvious to the
Society’s leadership very early that Martha was not being compensated as the
professional musician which she had been trained formally to be, and this was
not acceptable to anyone including Martha. We all were agreed that the principle
of professional pay for professional skills was the only way that the Society
could advance and thrive. But there was no money. While everyone contemplated
bake sales, Martha acted. She had long wanted to see more music available here
than existed then, and what more sensible way to achieve this long-held hope AND
make a little money than to run a Chamber Music Series? Never mind that in those
days nowhere in the country was chamber music making money. Never mind that
quartets were playing to half-filled small halls in most of the major cities,
and scarcely clearing their touring expenses and agents’ fees out of their
concert fees. The Choral Society would run a Chamber Music Series as a musical
opportunity for those in the community who would like it, and as a fund-raising
device to balance the budget. This was, even then, a pretty lunatic idea. It
worked, though. In 1951 a two-concert series was announced. When we planned for
the concerts, we decided to work from the top down: we asked the Budapest String
Quartet and the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet, and they accepted. We charged
$1.25 per person per concert, about a third or quarter as much as similar
concerts elsewhere.
As we subsequently found each year, there is
ALWAYS a crisis—always—and our first year contained our first. The Budapest was
great, but because of illness, the Woodwind Quintet had to cancel on less than
48 hours’ notice. Well, the first concert HAD been a success; we phoned the
Budapest’s management, and back the Quartet came for their second performance in
what proved to be a long series—six I believe—of their memorable appearances
here with us. In the back I have listed alphabetically all the groups and
artists that I can remember who appeared here in the Series’ 20 years of
operation: it’s quite outstanding. I wish the list were complete, but the files
aren’t, nor is my memory.
Aside #1: At this point it may seem
superfluous, but it isn’t, to explain how the Series worked, what it did for/to
the Society, and why, while generally praised in the community at large, it
never ceased provoking both controversy and blind adherence within the Society,
during its entire 20 years. Originally the Series filled a dual role. It
provided us all with music we could afford and didn’t otherwise hear, and it
served as a successful money-raising effort which no one could disapprove,
everyone could enjoy and profit from aesthetically, offered at a price less by
far than its city equivalent. Later on, as artists’ fees escalated and operating
costs multiplied, the Series stopped making money. It broke even for a couple of
halcyon years, and then became a financial drain. By that time it was
established that an absolute minimum of 500 people always counted on it for
their concert-going; the usual amount was between 600 and 750. The Society did
not want to raise the cost higher than the current and accepted community
standard and, later, the Artists Series equivalent. Considerably before this
time, however, the Society had read the handwriting, and had started its annual
Patron/Sponsor solicitation, of which more later.
From the point when the Series became a
financial drain, it became obvious that either it had to be ended forthwith, or
must somehow be continued under our sponsorship but not our financial umbrella,
which was leaking badly. There was, after all, a community of 500-700 souls who
seemed to count on it, in addition to about 100 more who bought tickets for
other reasons. We tried various ways, including questionnaires, to see how the
wind blew (it blew “continue”). But raising the price to a level high enough to
make it self-supporting would cut out important segments of our audience. Our
income at this point consisted of our ridiculous dues ($450 total from
approximately 75 people at $6) and our unvarying 11½¢
per person, average, at each choral concert. Our outgo was equally laughable,
but considerably larger, for Director’s fees, accompanist, concert costs, room
and hall rental, etc. This left us a less than zero balance to cover the
deficits being run up by the Series. We had some specific grants along the way
(of which again more later), but these did not solve the problem; indeed they
were either forbidden by their terms to be used towards the aspects of the
Series where we needed it, or towards any part of it at all.
We voted to continue sponsoring and managing the
Series, but with the understanding that we must devise a way to raise the money
that wasn’t there. The gap lay between what we charged, and what was charged
elsewhere in the U.S. for these artists (see the partial list again, and you’ll
see why). We decided to appeal directly to those members of’ the community who
were both willing and able to help us bridge the gap, since obviously had the
prices been raised to a “realistic” level, all youngsters, many young adults in
university, or couples with small children could not have afforded to come. We
even tried youth tickets, but it didn’t work. Our Patrons and Sponsors, in
essence, were those people who were interested in supporting one, various, or
all of the Society’s activities. These we defined to be 1) the existence of a
community choral group dedicated to presenting serious music, an asset in
evaluating the worth of one’s community; 2) the annual choral concert as a
contribution to the town’s cultural advantages; 3) the partial subsidizing of
chamber music concerts for the person’s own satisfaction; 4) same as #3 but for
its community value; 5) keeping the Choral Society going so they themselves, and
their friends, could sing in it. (Many of our donors came from within the
group.) Without their help it was impossible to carryon any of the Society’s
activities as they were then constituted. Without them, in other words, there
would be no Chamber Music Series (at a time when there was no Artists Series, al
though there did exist a “Community Concerts Series” limited to but a few
concerts of a different character, and presubscribed without advance knowledge
of artists or programs) .There would no longer be a professionally directed
chorus open to any qualified singer, nor any choral concert of large serious
works other than those wonderful ones of Willa Taylor’s at the University that
no one could ever get into without queuing from early morning. Although after 20
years, the Series had to be discontinued, the absolute necessity for
Patron/Sponsor support continues to be true today. Without these people who
believe in helping the town to have a first-rate chorus open to all qualified
applicants, and professionally led by a director of first-rate qualifications in
his field, the town would instantly lose this particular asset in its unusually
blessed collection of attractions. As evidence that the Society’s members are
not relying on outsiders alone, I turned up the statistic that 48½% of last
year’s contributors were present or former members of the Society, and that far
more than half of the total money contributed came from them.
But we do seem to be a contentious lot. Two
points: 1) we love singing but we don’t want to dilute the experience nor do we
have time to give more than one evening a week to it. 2) Organizations of 100
people don’t run by accident, concerts don’t happen without non-musical work as
well as musical rehearsal. Numbers one and two are irreconcilable. From thence
bubbled the never-ending resentment over being asked to sell tickets to the
Series. Those who disliked or were indifferent to chamber music joined those who
“just wanted to sing” (as if any of us ever wanted to do anything but sing, in
the group) in wishing the Series would go away, and hoping that patrons would
come up on the street and proffer money (some did, but few). Those who realized
that the alternative was a series of less financially productive bake sales, or
else no more singing at all, at least of this excellent caliber, kept pointing
irritatingly at the Series as the most helpful and appropriate, least painful,
and most educational tine in a several-pronged tool that served to bring a large
variety of music to a lot of people in many different ways. Every aspect of the
Society’s activities helped every other aspect to exist; without any one of
them, all others would fold. For those who found this to be an unpalatable
situation (but no one LIKES selling tickets, and certainly no one liked to work;
everyone “just wanted to sing” and I say this most seriously), for these people
it eventually became a personal decision as to whether the chore of supporting
their choral habit (it’s addictive) with same work was more than their addiction
to the habit was worth. But the choice was unavoidable; the Society could lose
its painfully acquired excellence and, along with it, most of its musically
experienced membership who were un1ikely to tolerate sloppy mediocrity, or it
could pay for its growth into maturity by working to maintain it in more or less
unpleasant ways.
But there were always enough people who said
yes—yes, of course!—when one knew they’d really rather not, to counteract the
people who refused to be in it for anything but the singing, but were happy—as
were we all—to enjoy its continuingly improving excellence. Some of the people
who said yes were among our busiest and most fully employed. These paragraphs
are less in the nature of a sermon, actually; they are rather intended as a
paean to the many tough-minded characters who always took a job when asked,
always got it done on time, and usually spelled it right. But the operation and
indeed the existence of the Series, though endlessly rewarding, was a divisive
thing to the membership from beginning to end, despite its having fulfilled its
every function. The historian’s assessment is necessarily partisan since she
participated in its every fibre from the time it was only a gleam until the time
it was only a memory. But quite objectively, it remains difficult to envision
how a group of the size and quality of ours can continue without some kind of
funding in a commercial world. Further, no one ever came up with a different,
let alone better, way of getting funds. The character of the Society night have
been different without it, but the Society’s quality would surely have been
diminished, diluted, or greatly compromised, had it in fact continued at all.
The Chamber Music Series held unexpected
benefits. Several times in the beginning years we were able to arrange such
things as lecture-recitals, workshops, illustrative explanations of more
difficult contemporary works, or children’s concerts. These blessings were given
us by the artists while the: were here, either at no extra fee to us, or at a
ridiculously low one. At any rate, we always arranged to have them open to the
public at no extra charge. Things were simpler then. I remember one t1me when I
picked up the phone to the Heads of the English, German and Music Departments,
respectively, and asked them if their budgets permitted $25 towards a
lecture-recital on Bartok’s 2nd quartet. (Music Department, yes, of course—but
English? German? Answer: they were the only ones I knew, and they were both
fiercely devoted to the furtherance of such things) .Getting 121 Sparks was
easy: it was available if it was empty—literally free if it was free. It’s a
necessary concomitant of progress that such happy informality would now, even if
it were possible, only get everyone into trouble, and rightly so.
Towards the end of Martha Ramsey’s directorship,
a non-renewable grant was applied for through a former member, Helen Clements,
who had moved to New York to work for the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation.
This was granted with the understanding but not the stipulation that the Series
would concern itself from time to time with the problems that young artists of
undisputed talent but no national reputation had in getting concert engagements.
There were enough musicians in the Society, or friendly to it, or known in other
cities to it, who were able to assess these young soloists or chamber groups so
that this put us in touch with fresh, new, and sometimes better talent at
considerably smaller fees. We tried never to sign up these people without one of
us having heard them, or having received a glowing report from a disinterested
knowledgeable musician. This proper rein on our enthusiasms led us to one of our
major goofs. We could have signed up, for a couple of hundred dollars, a young
unknown by the name of Van Cliburn, the year before he won THE piano prize in
Russia, the contract to be honored the following year when, as fate would have
it, he had by then won the prize. And we didn’t sign him up. No one had heard
him play, or knew anyone trustworthy who had. Or anyone who had. I think
of it still, now, every time he is here on the Artists Series, and sometimes I
don’t enjoy the concert so much.
This grant was only applicable directly to the
fees of the artists on our Series, but it enabled us to take chances on the
scheduling and programming that an empty bank account would have ruled out. We
could schedule two string quartets and a tenor-and-lutenist without worrying if
the Series would “sell” (it did), or we could satisfy the demand for an
occasional all-Bartok or all-Beethoven program without stewing. Above all, in
taking these chances, we were able to avoid again the pitfalls of compromising
excellence, or of embracing a possibly more obvious but more mediocre Series, so
as not to go flat broke or worse. We always tried to renew the approximate
balance as it fluctuated with our less or more popular decisions, and our
occasional mistakes. And it gave us a backlog as well, to reduce our worry over
the escalating costs of the annual choral concert.
But this has already carried us through to
1969/70 when the Series ended, and we must back-pedal a bit. The history of the
Society itself divides most easily into the tenures of its Directors, since
every group will reflect the style of its Director, and rightly so. In 1955 the
Society did some excerpts from Bach St. Matthew Passion, among other
things, and the new voice teacher at the University, Raymond Brown, sang the
bass solos. The following year, Martha decided that the Society should depart
its hitherto exclusive preoccupation with Bach, and tackle the Mozart Requiem.
But during preparation for this, her husband accepted a job elsewhere, and the
Ramsey household left here, in a repetition of the usual occupational hazard of
University life. Raymond Brown, in addition to being a singer and voice teacher,
had received his training in choral conducting under, among others, Ifor Jones,
best known to most State College people as the Director of the Bethlehem Bach
festival at that time, and for many years. Raymond became the Society’s new
Director; not to fill Martha’s shoes because no one could, but to take what
Martha had built with such care and love, and to carry it forward in his, not
her way. This is, of course, how groups grow and mature. Yet we will never
forget Martha’s wish to “sing all the parts.” We will also never forget
Raymond’s “all I ever ask of you—as I do of myself—is your very best at all
times,” interspersed with ear-splitting whistles and shouted exhortations to
breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe-breathe early rather than late. He remained the
Society’s Director for more than half its current life: 14 vital years in which
we ranged from Vivaldi to Stravinsky, but always returned to home plate: Johann
Sebastian Bach.
He kept the focus of community always as the
basis of the group, but he immediately moved the concerts from the acoustically
difficult and far too tiny platform at the church to the Fairmount Avenue High
School (as it then was) and thence, when it was built, to the new High School on
Westerly Parkway, with our audiences increasing to fill each larger hall. He
changed the concert date to spring, so as to afford a full year’s rehearsals and
avoid the summer’s forgetting-time. Through his own energies and devotion, he
carried the Chamber Music Series and the Patron/Sponsor program to new heights
of success. He stayed with the one-concert-a-year plan, a way of operation which
gave each member of the Society as then constituted (always, and still then, a
mixed bag of talents and skills) the time to dig into the music according to his
own abilities—”his very best,” one might say. Rehearsals were never boring; they
might be exciting, explosive, exalting or exasperating—or even infuriating—but
they were always memorable. The Series, backed by the security of the grant
which, although always used was always replaced, continued as an important part
of the town’s musical life, under his unceasing supervision and management. The
Patron/Sponsor Program grew from a score of people giving scarcely more than a
couple of hundred dollars to 115 people giving many hundreds. The membership
grew as high as 107, which is where it stands at the beginning of our 25th year;
they commuted from Lewistown, Huntingdon, Belleville, Pine Grove Mills, and
Bellefonte, as well as from our own “suburbs.” People’s children grew up to
become members, and we found ourselves in brochures citing the town’s
prospective virtues to incomers. A former member of the Chorale Choir,
subsequently a voice student of Raymond’s—Lorine Buffington—returned from her
roles at the Metropolitan Opera Studio to be our soloist twice.
We even made the New York Times. We were
the lucky beneficiaries of several excellent soloists engaged year after year by
Brown through his own contacts in the musical world, and one of them was
Gwendolyn Killebrew. The sequence of events was this: she was engaged by us
through him. THEN she won the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air. Her appearance
with us was scheduled just after her win (but contracted before—shades of the
missed Cliburn) and the Times decided to run an article “A Day in the
Life of Gwendolyn Killebrew,” and there we were, pictured as part of the
backdrop.
We also sang some out-of-town concerts. We
argued about what the women would wear, but I noticed that it was only in
sibilant whispers, because after a couple of full-scale time-wasting debates,
the Director said “Don’t ask me. Don’t tell me. Work it out. Wear what you’ve
always worn.” (By that time, long since, we had changed to white blouses and
short black skirts). All voice students who were tenors joined the Society.
We were helped for many years with funding our
orchestra by a grant from the Trust Funds of the Recording Industries, obtained
by the cooperation of Local 660, American Federation of Musicians and arranged
for by Raymond. This grant actually came straight from the Funds to the members
of the orchestra; our only role was to expedite the paper-shuffling. But it
enabled us to pay our orchestra a small sum, one more step towards an increased
excellence and professionalism. Although each year, almost from the beginning of
this, was proclaimed as the “last” possible year, we in fact continued receiving
them for a total of seven years. When we really could not get them any more, we
had yet once again to look for a substitute; the Trust Funds had not allowed us
to pass a collection plate, which seemed small loss, because the most recent
tabulation had risen but about a quarter of a cent per person. We had to start
charging for our performances. But by now they were worth it by any standard of
measurement.
Aside #2: Statistics on our backgrounds do not
abound. Much is listed on our application cards, but since these are used for
try-out results, they sometimes bear comments which place them where they
rightfully belong: in the sole guardianship of the Director. Pat Farrell’s
doctoral dissertation included same statistics about motivation and
occupation-classification of choral singers in general, and among these were
included some singers from the Society who volunteered, upon request, to
participate. It is a veritable mine of information, but for the purposes of a
short history such as this, it skews or distorts her complex findings to try to
winkle out specifics about just a few of the many singers from many
organizations. But considering that participants from the Society were
volunteers (this means that those whose experience is minimal will often shrink
from such a study, and those whose professional training is in music may also
not participate), an interesting spread of musical training and skill shows. If
one sets up a scale from one to 100 to measure such skills, the Choral Society
volunteers placed from 36 to 81. Occupationally, for her purposes, most of them
fell into the professional or clerical, and while this is certainly a reflection
of the majority of members, it contains such a wealth of diversity that I have
preferred to call upon my own memory of people rather than, for our purposes,
let it go just at that. More in a moment, but I cannot resist comment upon one
of her findings. Volunteers were asked to check more likely and less likely
reasons for their participation and motivation, and the one checked as least
motivating was “to assist with money raising projects.” I also think that all
our Directors will take interest in another unpopular motivation checked as
among the least likely: “to joke and kid with friends.” Each of them who has had
to strive constantly in the devising of effective ways to explain “SHUT UP,”
might question the sincerity of the answerers.
But with respect to diversity of occupations
over the years I have been amazed at this, and here are some I remember. We have
had dentists, antique dealers and restorers, ministers, restaurateurs, X-ray
technicians, librarians, carpenters, nurses, businessmen, plumbers, lab
technicians, cooks, teachers, newspaper publishers, secretaries, doctors, army
officers, missionaries, and marriage counselors, to name but a few; and these
themselves exclusive of the bulk of our membership from University and from
housewifery. Every college and almost every discipline at the University is
represented in every range, and age-group, and we regularly have students of
both high-school and university age. Despite Director Brown’s unforgotten query
to the sopranos “You know what you sound like, girls? HAUSFRAUEN,” a startlingly
large number of our housewives and mothers are of the sort who help run the
League of Women Voters, or their church, or the Hospital, or who balance some
small business’s books in their spare time at home.
And hobbies! Cynthia Rosenberger, at one time
our publicity chair, turned up flyers and gliders, climbers, swimmers and
sailors, people who sew, tat, crochet or knit, cyclists both do-it-yourself and
motor, campers, painters, photographers and sculptors, skiers both water and
winter, experts at crafts, macrame and ceramics, woodworkers and orchid-growers,
button-collectors and dancers, bird-watchers and writers.
In 1966 Raymond Brown was appointed Director of’
Choral Music at the University, and it was obvious as that job grew in
importance, that his Choral Society time was drawing to a close. It had been a
wonderful and flowering 14 years—not until three years from now will it cease to
be more than half of our life-span. In the spring of 1969 he promised another
year, but tendered his resignation at that time to take effect in the spring of
1970. The last concert was Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (in which so many
years ago he had joined the Choral Society as bass soloist), and it was
videotaped under the ceaseless personal supervision of WPSX’s Bill Miller,
himself a long-time member of the group. This videotape is still, at present
writing, sometimes shown at the Easter season by WPSX.
During this same year the Chamber Music
Series was finally brought to a close after 20 years. There were more than
enough concerts of equal value now available through the Artists Series, and
additionally there were now weekly and even semi-weekly concerts by members of
the Music Department. The hard core of 500 people was still with us, but the
full house of 800 which we needed was out of the question, and for two years
past, only sentiment and a lingering sense of responsibility to our loyal 500
had kept us presenting it. It was coincidental that the Series stopped the year
that our director of 14 years left, but the timing was perhaps a good thing;
much had changed, and much more was going to, when Raymond left. We needed to
search for new ways to develop, because we needed the old director for the old
ways, his ways, to continue in their successful course. The Series had served
its purpose, and served everyone well and honestly who had ever been touched by
it.
A grand farewell banquet was held for Raymond. I
am told it was a time of great emotion with speeches, plaques, scrolls, poems,
tears, and everything else which is suitable and natural for a time of such
important transition. I happened that year to be away. I was affiliated with a
Scottish chorus which was doing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, the
first work chosen independently by Brown for the Society in 1958, after he had
successfully presented the Mozart Requiem in a 1957 concert according to
the plans he had inherited from Martha. We in Scotland were also locked in
combat concerning the material to be chosen for the women’s dress-uniforms, and
trying with minimal success to enlarge the tenor section. I never even knew
there was a banquet until someone wrote me about it several months later, but
everyone who sang during that last year, and who attended the banquet will
surely remember it all very clearly from beginning to end.
We had an interim year, 1970/71, directed by
John McGowan who had to commute all the way from Lock Haven through the winter
snows. It was the Beethoven Bicentenary Year, and we initiated a cooperation
with the newly forming State College Symphony Orchestra which has been continued
ever since. Some of its members, with Phyllis Triolo as piano soloist, joined us
for the Choral Fantasy. But our real, last, one, first, only and unique
operation was a complete—repeat, complete—performance of Beethoven’s Ruins of
Athens. No one believes this because no one ever does this, complete. I have
not been able, despite extensive research both then and now, to turn up anyone
except the Lock Haven State College chorus and our Society who has ever done a
complete Ruins, spoken text and all, and our audiences are thus one-up on
audiences every/any-where else, even in that Bicentenary Year. It simply was
never done. Except by us. (“You Can Look It Up” as the James Thurber story is
entitled.) Anyone who heard it will know why it is seldom done; it languishes in
well-deserved obscurity; but almost all of us developed the kind of fondness for
its blatantly banal and thunderously bad music that one harbors for the weakest
child. When two or three from that year are gathered together, we will often
sway and dance our way through “Hungarian Loyalty,” and, given a beer or two,
the men will make the air ring with their bellowed “Ka-a-ba! Ka-a-ba!” from the
“Chorus of Dervishes.” Anyone who missed that year missed an unforgettable
experience.
The following year Dr. Douglas Miller, Director
of the University Symphony and the Musica da Camera took over as Director of the
Society. It is in his third year with us that we enter and celebrate our own
25th year. We have changed again. During that first year, a small group of 16
women was selected from the Society’s membership to cooperate with the State
College Symphony in Debussy’s “Nocturnes.” We plan to continue this cooperation
this year, joining with them in the fall for Brahms’ Schicksalslied. We
held a Christmas-caroling evening and serenaded our Patrons and Sponsors all
over town. Broke as usual, we staged a Charity Walkathon to Bellefonte and
raised almost $500. Those of us who walked feel strongly that a Chamber Music
Series is an easier way, but 11 of us made it, with two young people, sons of
members, jogging the entire distance non-stop instead of walking. Doug Miller
planned a madrigal dinner similar to those at Indiana and Illinois, to name but
two places. With a dedicated committee and a small and enchanted group of
singers selected by try-out from the Society’s membership, two evenings were
ultimately scheduled and sold out, with 200 people each night coming to eat
roast beef and listen to medieval and Elizabethan Christmas music (and one song
by Billings to see it the audience was alert). Recorders, harpsichord and horn
filled in as well, and with banners and Shakespearean costumes (of many
centuries’ imagination, and lots of home needlework), we ushered in the
Christmas season. This is being continued this year.
It looks as if in some ways our new directions
are taking us around towards our beginnings from yet other entries and along
paths we never could have envisioned: the Society again has its spin-off groups.
It used to be the Chorale Choir; then it turned to sponsorship of the subsidiary
Series. Now we select small groups from within our membership to present or
participate in other community enterprises the Madrigal Singers sang last year
for the A.A.U.W. as well. All of these turnings are new; we have tried them but
once at present writing, although they are already under organization and
rehearsal for this year again. It is Douglas Miller’s enthusiasm, steely
kindness (“if Mozart had intended the rustle of turning pages to be a part of
the score at that point, he would have written it in”), tremendous dedication
and overmuch donation of his time which carries this and us along—as indeed with
other directors in past years.
Aside #3 one of my closest colleagues, in
reading this to advise me, said of many of the statements and statistics:
“Information like this only causes ill feeling. Instead of ANY numbers, just say
xxx and footnote it as deleted because of possible ill-feeling. For
adjectives use ***, and instead of names, stick to C***e, B***n or M***r. Be
bland.” This was accompanied by laughter, but it’s true that I’ve had to leave
out some of the most comical, or scarey, or pathetic of our shared experiences.
An Underground History of our 25 years would indeed be an Entertainment. Trouble
is, too many people would suddenly leave toqn, too many who have left couldn’t
come back, and I would have to use the pen name Minerva, from the forgettable
Ruins. But these things are part of us too, and those of us who lived
through it will remember them with the usual mixed emotions.
As I said earlier, the choral concert planned
for our 25th year is indeed fitting: Bach’s B Minor Mass.
This seems at first blush like a pretty arrogant undertaking—almost as arrogant
as it seemed in 1949. But not quite. Thanks to some remarkable leadership along
the way, we have come a vast distance. What more fitting tribute could there be
to our beginnings than to have people not yet born in 1949 now lifting their
voices (to be sure, only singing one part at a time) in Bach’s marvelous work,
giving at all times nothing but their very best (and gaspingly remembering to
breathe early rather than late). Arrogant, perhaps, but Bach will survive it, we
will be vastly the richer for it, and we hope our audience will come and enjoy
it.
My last words can only be these 1) we voted last
year (not unanimously; unanimous only in denying male suffrage) for the women to
wear long floor-length skirts instead of short ones; 2) if you are a tenor, come
and sing with us whether you can carry a tune or not, 3) give us some money; and
4) you don’t any more have to sell any Chamber Music Series tickets to pull your
weight; what you DO have to do remains to be seen by all of us. Come sing with
us!
