SURETTE DEFENDS GLEE CLUB STAND

Thomas Whitney Surette '92, has written to the New York Times a letter dealing with the feeling stirred up by the withdrawal of the Glee Club from the Intercollegiate Competition. He has adopted a stand quite opposite to that taken by Thomas W. Slocum '90, and F. S. Rogers '91 in the matter, and defends the retirement as entirely expedient.

Mr. Surette is a lecturer in the Department of Music in the University, and also heads a music school in Concord. He has collaborated with Associate Professor Davison in the production of the Concord series of musical publications, and is composer of note.

His letter follows:

"The withdrawal of the Harvard Glee Club from the annual Intercollegiate Singing Contest seems to have unduly excited a few of the graduates living in New York, two of whom have written irate letters to the Harvard CRIMSON and the Bulletin. To these letters G. W. Woodworth, acting conductor, has replied showing that the club has lived up to its agreements, and has acted entirely within its rights.

"The club is keeping to the policy it has pursed for many years. That policy, inaugurated by Dr. Davison, is to sing the best music in the best manner. Whatever struggle there may have been at the outset to get Harvard College undergraduates to sing such music, it very soon transpired that they preferred it to any other. The club is a cross-section of the college; it has demonstrated its value not only in the college world but in the general world of music, to its influence is largely due the very great improvement in standards among college glee clubs.

"It has been of very great value to American music because it has enlisted a real interest in the best music among American youth, for its influence has extended to preparatory school. It new retires from this contest for good and sufficient reasons, and the action it took early in October in relation to the coming contest was approved by the Executive Committee of the Club and by the Graduate Advisory Committee.

"Why is it that a group of young men in college, led by an extremely able and devoted man, a member of the music department, who prefer to sing the best music and who demonstrate year by year their capacity to sing it well, who are invited to visit a foreign country and are received everywhere with acclaim, who have raised the standard of college music, whose repertoire edited by the leader has been published and sold all over the United States and even in England--why at this juncture, because the club insists on maintaining its standard, should any Harvard graduates anywhere cavil at it? Isn't the Glee Club the young men who sing in it? If they prefer the best, should graduates scold them?"