Day: August 17, 2009

I may have found a missing link in the Virginia Glee Club’s history prior to the 1920s, when it became a part of the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia. As I’ve written before, the Club disbanded and reformed pretty frequently in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and we have evidence that the group came back together in 1910 following a hiatus of no more than four or five years. Now we know who led the group then–and it was a professor, not a student. (See my prior post on student directors of the Glee Club for some of the history there.)

A new volume of Madison Hall Notes, the journal of what was then the UVA branch of the YMCA, is on Google Books. In Vol. VI No. 7 (Oct 22, 1910) and Vol. VI No. 11 (Feb. 11, 1911) we read of the newly (re)formed Virginia Glee Club under the direction of Professor M.S. Remsburg. Hopefully I’ll turn up some more information on Remsburg and the efforts to rebuild the Club as more information from this era comes online.