Resonant connection
A recent performance in Harvard’s vaulted Sanders Theatre looked more like a rock concert than a recital of early Renaissance music. Standing in the first two rows, a group of young boys and teens clad in jeans and crimson sweatshirts hooted and hollered for the singers onstage. The fans weren’t undergraduates, but members of a choir in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester that has a curious Harvard history and a deep connection to the Harvard Glee Club, the country’s oldest college chorus, founded in 1858. Much of what the Glee Club is today can be traced to the efforts of Archibald T. Davison, a Harvard man with a passion for music and song. A member of the Harvard College Class of 1906, Davison returned to the University for his graduate studies in 1907, joined the Harvard Music Department in 1910, and eventually took on the role of Harvard organist and choirmaster. In...