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.
Aaandd… a very interesting fact. In the 1905 (Vol. 1) Madison House Notes, there is a copy of the official University Weekly Bulletin, with all announcements of all club meetings. The Glee Club is listed rehearsing once or twice a week … until the week of January 29, 1906. It meets four times that week, and then nothing after Saturday, February 3, 1906 for the rest of the year. This may be the clearest evidence of the beginning of the Club’s first hiatus period that we have.
Aaand another date that explains the confusion of the 1914-1915 timeline. The dates for Hall-Quest’s directorship, judging from the 1914 Madison House Notes, actually start in the fall of 1914.
Aaand… a notice for an upcoming Glee Club concert under the direction of A. L. Hall-Quest in Volume XI (2/19/1916). More on that soon.