Talk:Harvard Glee Club

Link glee club somewhere
Can someone figure out a decent place in opening paragraph to nicely link glee Club. While I'm sure that to Americans this is a familiar concept, but to the rest of us (bar really old Brits, I think) it sounds more like some kind of scary cult movement. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:07, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * done, i think Apollo58 00:14, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

About the unref tag
I see that there are two sources from print, and these maybe the ones that the editor has used to write the rest of the unreferenced materials. However, in the footnote section, the editor has to list all the page numbers from which the materials come from. (Wikimachine 01:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC))
 * I'll bite on the unref tag, however I think it is extremely excessive to add a fact tag after every single sentence - there is general consensus that this is not necessary, and you'll find not a single article on wikipedia that has a footnote after every sentence. So I will leave the tag at the top but for the sake of readability I'm removing all the fact tags.- Dmz5  *Edits**Talk* 01:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, about 9/10 of what you tagged with (although admittedly, not all of it) is supported by the footnoted references which have been provided - I just didn't footnote every sentence.  Also, the fact that you put multiple fact tags within single sentences as well as after patently factual statements is also rather excessive.-- Dmz5  *Edits**Talk* 01:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I thought that could be put after every sentence. Many featured articles have a ref per an affirmative statement. Sorry, but the article sounded as if it was written by a member of the Harvard Glee club who knows a lot about the club & therefore edited without much efforts to referencing. (Wikimachine 01:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC))
 * I totally understand your point and that is the sort of thing we all want to avoid in any article. However, I think the references that are provided, almost all of which are found on the web, back up every affirmative statement in the article with only a couple of exceptions.  For example, the "history" section of the glee club website, while not the ideal source as it is not exactly independent, can be used to establish simple matters of fact (such as the date of founding).


 * Also, I changed the tag from unref to "more sources." The article does, in fact, have lots of sources, it just needs more.  I think this tag is more appropriate.  Thanks for your input!-- Dmz5  *Edits**Talk* 01:54, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you're at all interested, I have also been editing Cornell Glee Club, University of Pennsylvania Glee Club, Rutgers Glee Club, and University of Michigan Men's Glee Club in an effort to bring them all up to code and at least try to introduce sources that aren't the group's websites.-- Dmz5 *Edits**Talk* 01:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

GA Fail
The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question. You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Some pointers to help improve it for next time, M3tal H3ad 02:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * this tag
 * Don't wikilink solo years, ex 1958
 * references come after punctuation, ex [1]. should be .[1]
 * you can remove 'see also' section as you wikilink the terms in the lead
 * references are all laid out differently, please check the template
 * one sentence paragraphs
 * Article is fairly list heavy, try convert it into writing
 * Automated review
 * Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.[?]
 * There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.[?] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
 * Per Manual of Style (headings), headings generally do not start with articles ('the', 'a(n)'). For example, if there was a section called  ==The Biography== , it should be changed to  ==Biography== .[?]
 * Per Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading  ==Magellan's journey== , use  ==Journey== .[?]
 * Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
 * While additive terms like “also”, “in addition”, “additionally”, “moreover”, and “furthermore” may sometimes be useful, overusing them when they aren't necessary can instead detract from the brilliancy of the article. This article has 9 additive terms, a bit too much.
 * Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “ All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
 * As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2][?]
 * Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.


 * I'm glad you took the time to look at the article, and some of the suggestions are definitely valuable, but none of the problems you identified preclude it from being a "Good Article" and it meets every criteria listed there and then some...- Dmz5 *Edits**Talk* 04:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

"Oldest"
There is an ongoing discussion at Harvard about why the Glee Club gets to be called the oldest college choir in the country when Harvard's University Choir is older. The reasoning that's always used is that the University Choir is NOT actually a college choir. It is the choir of the Memorial Church, not directly affiliated with the college in the same way as the Glee Club; it is directed by an employee of the Church, not a faculty member, has graduate student and faculty members (and is thus not a primarily undergraduate institution, as the Glee Club is), and has a long history of paying professional singers to be part of it. Whether this argument holds water in the strictest sense is, perhaps, up for debate, but the fact remains that Harvard's own website identifies the Glee Club as such, as do newspaper articles about it and all of its own press and historical materials (which, I should add, have never been challenged by the management of the University Choir, even though the groups exist side by side). At one point, this article had a mention of this debate, but it was removed because there's no reliable, independant way to cite the argument I explain above; it's just "the way it is" and until an article about it is written in the Boston Globe and we can cite that, the lead should remain as is. -Apollo58 18:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

A response:

1) Since the Harvard University Choir predates the Memorial Church, I would hesitate to sum it up as merely "the choir of the Memorial Church."  By the time Mem Church was built (in 1932), the University Choir had already existed as a singing group for about a century.  In fact, the building formerly occupied by the University Choir, Holden Chapel, is the place where the Glee Club now rehearses: since both groups regularly perform in auditoriums other than these spaces, it would be about as accurate to call the Glee Club "the choir of the Holden Chapel."

2) The University Choir has no "faculty members" who sing in it, and less than 10% of either the U-Choir or the Choral Fellows are made up of graduate students.  Since the Glee Club also has graduate students who sing in it every year, both groups seem equally qualified to call themselves "college choir[s]."  Thus, both groups are, furthermore, "primarily undergraduate institution[s]."

3) To claim merely that the University Choir "has a long history of paying professional singers to be part of it" leaves out many important details.  Only singers who are full-time students at Harvard are permitted to sing with the University Choir; moreover, every one of those singers is paid equally; this is because the Memorial Church values its music enough for it to be willing to hire those students most musically capable of performing new music every week.  Thus, although the University Choir is certainly a 'professional' organization, you could hardly call someone who is attending Harvard College full-time a "professional singer."

4) The Glee Club's OWN website may identify the Glee Club as the oldest college choir in the country, but I was hard-pressed to find an instance where Harvard's website (www.harvard.edu) did so, especially since the reference attached to this important detail is a broken link.

5) Most importantly, the singers who went on to be the first members of the Harvard Glee Club, in 1858, had until then been members exclusively of the University Choir; i.e., U-Choir had already existed for twenty years, before a few of its singers branched off to sing exclusively secular music.  With these facts in place, it seems that only the Harvard University Choir could rightly be called "the oldest college choir in the country." -WaldoChump (talk) 19:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Some further clarifications and responses:

1) The Glee Club and U Choir both, according to their bylaws and to their pages on the Harvard student organizations page, accept both undergraduate and graduate student members. Therefore this line of argument is clearly moot.

2) It would not be as accurate to call the Glee Club the 'choir of Holden Chapel' as it to call U Choir the 'choir of the Memorial Church.' The Glee Club never performs in Holden Chapel, while U Choir performs each week in the Memorial Church (and the Choral Fellows an additional 5 times per week).  Furthermore, in the stated purpose of U Choir, the first two sentences read, "The Harvard University Choir sings for the Sunday services in The Memorial Church, for the annual Christmas Carol Services and presents concerts of the great sacred choral literature. The sixteen Choral Fellows sing for the daily Morning Prayers service."  U Choir has a relationship with the Memorial Church as primary venue both in practice and in its own constitution; the Glee Club has no such relationship.

3) Perhaps the Harvard Web site was having difficulty when you tried the link, or perhaps the page was moved, but as of today the reference you mentioned in (4) above works, and indeed the Glee Club's page on the Harvard student organization refers to the group as America's oldest college choir.

4) Whether or not U Choir was ever an institution of the College is up for debate. In order properly to be considered the oldest college choir, I would expect that a group would have maintained its collegiate affiliation from its earliest days up to the present.  It is in discussion of present affiliation that I think the case for the Glee Club is strongest, whatever the status may have been many years ago.

5) A clarification on what constitutes a collegiate organization. On the Harvard student organization page for U Choir, the link under 'Constitution' leads not to a constitution, but to a "handbook" apparently prepared by conductor(s) of the group.  Control of the choir rests in the hands of the Organist and Choirmaster and Assistant Organist and Choirmaster, as well as two undergraduate 'secretaries' whom they appoint.  In this structure, both the musical direction and the administration of the choir fall ultimately upon employees of the Memorial Church, which is affiliate with Harvard University, though not with the college.  Also, the lack of a formal constitution or elected undergraduate leadership would seem to suggest that the Choir, as well, lacks official institutional affiliation with the College.

The situation is actually quite different with the Glee Club. The Club has bylaws, available on the student organization page, and is a recognized student organization of Harvard College. The current conductors hold faculty and staff positions in the College, and manage only musical affairs of the group; however, by the bylaws, the Glee Club itself selects the conductor, and the Executive Committee holds final authority on Club membership decisions. The first sentence of the membership section states explicitly that the Glee Club is primarily an undergraduate organization. Furthermore, the entire business and administrative work of the Glee Club is carried out explicitly by its managers and elected officers (typically a quarter to a third of the total membership), all of whom must be undergraduates, and all of whom are either elected by the membership or appointed by outgoing undergraduate management.

The two organizations differ regarding explicit relationship to Harvard College, institutional affiliation of conductors, emphasis on undergraduate membership, and explicit and implicit organizational control by undergraduates, and in each of these areas, the Glee Club appears to be an organization of the College, run by College students, while U Choir appears to be an organization of the Memorial Church, run by employees of the Memorial Church. Whatever the U Choir's institutional affiliation was in 1834, it doesn't appear to have a serious claim to collegiate affiliation today. I don't think it would be accurate, then, to describe it as 'America's oldest college choir.' —Preceding unsigned comment added by W.stanovsky (talk • contribs) 09:41, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

6) One last note, for accuracy: The Glee Club was actually founded in 1858 by an act of the executive committee of the Pierian Sodality, today the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra, not as an offshoot of U Choir. W.stanovsky (talk) 09:44, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Failed GA
Sorry, there are just too many issues to warrant passing/on-holding. Here are some:
 * Lots of stubby sentences not in paragraphs, like the one at the end of the "The Glee Club today" section (which, incidentally, is a bad section heading and should be changed). Also in the "Musical tradition" there are a few.
 * WP:FURG -
 * Alumni aren't "notable" if they are a redlink.
 * "Composers who have dedicated works to the Harvard Glee Club" completely unreferenced.

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question. You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 01:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.[?]
 * There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.[?] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
 * Per Manual of Style (headings), headings generally do not start with articles ('the', 'a(n)'). For example, if there was a section called  ==The Biography== , it should be changed to  ==Biography== .[?]
 * Per Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading  ==Magellan's journey== , use  ==Journey== .[?]
 * Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at Guide to layout.[?]
 * Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
 * Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “ All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
 * Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]

Conductor timeline
There is a contradiction between this article's timeline of conductors and the article on Irving Fine. The Fine article states that he conducted the Harvard Glee Club between 1939 and 1950, when he left to start the music programs at Brandeis. But this is the period when Woody Woodworth was conducting at Harvard, according to the article. Can someone clarify the relationship between Fine and the Harvard Glee Club? -Tjarrett (talk) 00:58, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Found in lede
I'm not sure this sentence belongs in the lede: "All three groups are led by Harvard's Director of Choral Activities Andrew Clark and Associate Conductor Kevin C. Leong. The Glee Club's assistant conductor is Michael C. McGaghie." Apart from anything else, it's Wiki policy not to include info in the lede which doesn't appear in the main article (i.e. details of the current associate conductor and assistant conductor). Rather than just delete it, though, I thought I would cut and paste it here in case anyone wanted to work these details into the main article. Alfietucker (talk) 00:24, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

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External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070311132358/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~musicdpt/faculty/marvin.html to http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~musicdpt/faculty/marvin.html

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