IMC: The Tenor-Bass Choral Consortium
Formerly Intercollegiate Musical Council & Intercollegiate Men's Choruses
A Bit of History
by Marshall Bartholomew
The usefulness and future promise of the Intercollegiate Musical Council are due to the idea of an undergraduate at Harvard who in 1913 felt strongly that fields of intercollegiate competition other than sports offered a great deal for the immediate participants and the public. During his senior year, this man, Albert Pickernell, planned and held an intercollegiate glee club contest with Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia and Pennsylvania participating. Harvard, with Pickernell leading, won the contest. When he graduated in 1914, he went to New York to work and joined the University Glee Club of New York. This Club, founded in 1894, is made up of men who sang in their college glee clubs and in its membership Pickernell found the kindred spirits to support him in his ideas. A first intercollegiate glee club contest was held in 1914 and three additional contests were held until the entry of the USA into World War I brought them to a close. In 1916 and 1917, Princeton, Amherst and Penn State joined the original four. The contests were resumed in 1921, with eight clubs participating, New York University having joined the group. The number grew slowly. Then with funds from individuals and foundations. Harriet Steel Pickernell, an experienced concert manager, took up her duties as Executive Secretary and later, Marshall Bartholomew became part-time Executive Director. Through their efforts, the program was expanded to cover the entire country.
The printed program of the "15th Annual Intercollegiate Glee Club Contest," held in Carnegie Hall, New York, March 14, 1931 mentions 67 Glee Clubs competing in 11 Regional or State Contests. There were students from colleges in 24 states plus a Metropolitan Region which included Columbia, NYU, Fordham and Yale. George Washington University participated in this 1931 Contest as winner of the National Finals in the previous year. Also the following regional winners: Lafayette College (Penn State Association), Washington University (Missouri Valley Association), Capitol University (Ohio State Association), Williams College (New England Regional Association), Union College (New York State Association).
The first National Finals Contest to be held outside of New York City was in the Spring of 1932 when the ten winning Clubs of the Regional Contests met at St. Louis and Pomona College from Southern California won the Prize Cup, with Yale 2nd and Penn State 3rd.
The climax of all previous activities of the IMC was to have come in 1933 with an International Festival of Student Singers upon which Harriet Pickernell and I had been working in collaboration with the Organizing Committee of the Chicago Centennial World's Fair. Student Choruses were all set to come to Chicago from 8 European countries. The deepening economic depression in the United States and the rapidly increasing menace of the Nazi movement in Germany and the Fascisti in Italy combined to defeat that project.
In spite of the catastrophic sequence of disappointments mentioned in this "bit of history" the IMC reached a peak of activity in 1933-34 with a membership of 139 college glee clubs representing 19 Regional Associations.
The IMC in America remained active until World War II which made not only the former National Finals, but even the Regional Festivals impossible, although a few of the better organized groups, such as the Southern California and the New England Association remained active until the outbreak of the War.
The International Student Musical Council was founded in Munich in 1931. Sponsored by the Intercollegiate Musical Council and financed by Francis P. Garvan, a prominent New York philanthropist, the moving spirits in this undertaking were Dr. Friedrich Beck of the University of Munich and myself. Delegates from Student Choruses of Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States participated. A paralyzing blow to this movement was dealt when Friedrich Beck was murdered in the Nazi Blood Purge of June 30, 1934. Before that tragic happening, however, the ISMC had met in Zurich (1932) and in Copenhagen (1933). The concert tours in the United States by the Budapest University Chorus (1936), Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat of Helsinki(1937) and NorskeStudentersangforening of Oslo(1938) were sponsored by the IMC and the ISMC.
One more meeting of the International Council was held in Copenhagen in 1937 for the principal purpose of laying plans for the Centennial celebration of the founding of the Danske Studenter Sangforeningen which was to take place during the third week of September 1939 in Copenhagen. A chorus of fifty singers from the UGC of New York planned to join forces in Copenhagen with student choruses from ten European countries but the Nazi army invaded Poland September 1st of that year, the Second World War got underway and that was the end of that well planned international songfest.
From 1939 until 1952 the Council remained inactive. Then Frank H. Baxter, a former President of the University Glee Club, became President of the Council and took the initiative to revitalize it. He devoted his efforts and resources unstintingly to this end and in 1954 the first evidence of life was the highly successful Seminar at Purdue University. Successful Seminars were held in order as listed separately.
As to its formal organization, the Intercollegiate Musical Council was incorporated in New York State in 1920, the incorporators, officers and directors being members of the University Glee Club, each representing his alma mater on the Board, each keeping in touch with his campus and speaking for it in the deliberations of the Board. In 1957, the organization was changed so that individual male glee clubs became members, the large Board of forty or more elected by the University Glee Club was reduced to seventeen, two being elected by the University Glee Club as the Founding Member and the others being elected by the member clubs.
When Frank H. Baxter died in 1958, his friends and business associates established the Baxter Fund which made possible the 1961 Prize Song Contest.
The historic past was fruitful. We have a great future!
The printed program of the "15th Annual Intercollegiate Glee Club Contest," held in Carnegie Hall, New York, March 14, 1931 mentions 67 Glee Clubs competing in 11 Regional or State Contests. There were students from colleges in 24 states plus a Metropolitan Region which included Columbia, NYU, Fordham and Yale. George Washington University participated in this 1931 Contest as winner of the National Finals in the previous year. Also the following regional winners: Lafayette College (Penn State Association), Washington University (Missouri Valley Association), Capitol University (Ohio State Association), Williams College (New England Regional Association), Union College (New York State Association).
The first National Finals Contest to be held outside of New York City was in the Spring of 1932 when the ten winning Clubs of the Regional Contests met at St. Louis and Pomona College from Southern California won the Prize Cup, with Yale 2nd and Penn State 3rd.
The climax of all previous activities of the IMC was to have come in 1933 with an International Festival of Student Singers upon which Harriet Pickernell and I had been working in collaboration with the Organizing Committee of the Chicago Centennial World's Fair. Student Choruses were all set to come to Chicago from 8 European countries. The deepening economic depression in the United States and the rapidly increasing menace of the Nazi movement in Germany and the Fascisti in Italy combined to defeat that project.
In spite of the catastrophic sequence of disappointments mentioned in this "bit of history" the IMC reached a peak of activity in 1933-34 with a membership of 139 college glee clubs representing 19 Regional Associations.
The IMC in America remained active until World War II which made not only the former National Finals, but even the Regional Festivals impossible, although a few of the better organized groups, such as the Southern California and the New England Association remained active until the outbreak of the War.
The International Student Musical Council was founded in Munich in 1931. Sponsored by the Intercollegiate Musical Council and financed by Francis P. Garvan, a prominent New York philanthropist, the moving spirits in this undertaking were Dr. Friedrich Beck of the University of Munich and myself. Delegates from Student Choruses of Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States participated. A paralyzing blow to this movement was dealt when Friedrich Beck was murdered in the Nazi Blood Purge of June 30, 1934. Before that tragic happening, however, the ISMC had met in Zurich (1932) and in Copenhagen (1933). The concert tours in the United States by the Budapest University Chorus (1936), Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat of Helsinki(1937) and NorskeStudentersangforening of Oslo(1938) were sponsored by the IMC and the ISMC.
One more meeting of the International Council was held in Copenhagen in 1937 for the principal purpose of laying plans for the Centennial celebration of the founding of the Danske Studenter Sangforeningen which was to take place during the third week of September 1939 in Copenhagen. A chorus of fifty singers from the UGC of New York planned to join forces in Copenhagen with student choruses from ten European countries but the Nazi army invaded Poland September 1st of that year, the Second World War got underway and that was the end of that well planned international songfest.
From 1939 until 1952 the Council remained inactive. Then Frank H. Baxter, a former President of the University Glee Club, became President of the Council and took the initiative to revitalize it. He devoted his efforts and resources unstintingly to this end and in 1954 the first evidence of life was the highly successful Seminar at Purdue University. Successful Seminars were held in order as listed separately.
As to its formal organization, the Intercollegiate Musical Council was incorporated in New York State in 1920, the incorporators, officers and directors being members of the University Glee Club, each representing his alma mater on the Board, each keeping in touch with his campus and speaking for it in the deliberations of the Board. In 1957, the organization was changed so that individual male glee clubs became members, the large Board of forty or more elected by the University Glee Club was reduced to seventeen, two being elected by the University Glee Club as the Founding Member and the others being elected by the member clubs.
When Frank H. Baxter died in 1958, his friends and business associates established the Baxter Fund which made possible the 1961 Prize Song Contest.
The historic past was fruitful. We have a great future!
A Bit More History
--- IMC since 1961
by Clayton Parr, 2008
As of 1961, the year in which Marshall Bartholomew wrote the history above, the Intercollegiate Musical Council was sponsoring annual Seminars at member schools around the country (the 1961 Seminar, held at Columbia University, had delegates from 37 member colleges in attendance). The 1961 Prize Song contest, adjudicated by Robert Shaw, G. Wallace Woodworth and George Howerton, was won by Leonard Kastle’s piece “Three Whale Songs from Moby Dick,” and was premiered at the 1962 Seminar at Northwestern University. The contest was never repeated in that form, and funds donated in memory of Frank Baxter remain with IMC to this day, with recent proceeds supporting the Male Chorus Commissioning Consortium. Seminars in the 1960s included more interest sessions than our more recent Seminars, with one or two concerts as part of the program.
IMC began publishing a newsletter in 1964, IMC News, renamed Quodlibet in 1970.
As of 1967, IM listed 63 member choruses (compared with 47 in 2008). Annual Seminars continued through the 1970s. with the first West Coast Seminar hosted by Carl Zytowski at UC-Santa Barbara in 1969. In 1968, then-President Fenno Heath wrote of the “ . . uncertainty of the survival of the male choruses on many campuses, it is our most important responsibility to encourage and support the activities of our member glee clubs wherever they may be, and to demonstrate the significance of the contribution which our groups can make to the musical life of our institutions. As one who has grown up in this tradition, I can only say that the friendships engendered and the benefits derived from this kind of association which we have all enjoyed are too precious and enduring to cast aside. We are the inheritors and the custodians of an ongoing pattern of musical activity which hopefully will enrich the lives of all who participated for years to come.” Not long afterward, many previously all-male glee clubs, including Yale’s, went co-ed as the climate for men’s choral music was affected by the many social changes sweeping the country at the time. Later in the 1970s, Father Richard Trame of Loyola Marymount University took over as Executive Secretary, replacing Clarence Davies of the University Glee Club of New York.
After the passing of Marshall Bartholomew in 1978, the Marshall Bartholomew Award was established to honor those who have made significant contributions to the field of male chorus music.
The IMC library, a collection of unpublished male choral music for duplication and free use by IMC member choruses, was established in 1972. Allen Crowell led the first editorial board, with Oats Harvey and Bruce Trinkley serving with him. The Library was converted to CD-ROM format in 2003 and now includes over 100 compositions. At present (2021), all library selections reside in a password-protected section of this website, accessible to dues-paying members.
The 1980s brought a number of significant changes to IMC. With the growth of the ACDA National Convention, IMC Seminars became biennial, held on the even-numbered years. In 1987, the name of the organization was changed from Intercollegiate Musical Council to Intercollegiate Men’s Choruses, the new name reflecting more precisely the organization’s purpose. In 1990, Jerry Polich of Kansas State became Executive Secretary of IMC, serving with distinction until 2007. Through the 1990s, our Seminars began to broaden their performance scope, with adult, community and professional male ensembles appearing alongside collegiate and secondary school groups on Seminar concert programs.
Starting in 2000, membership in IMC was offered to these groups under the category of “affiliated choruses.” In this way, IMC has come full circle. Its inception in 1914 was by collegiate alumni, singing in the University Glee Club of New York, wishing to offer competitions for collegiate glee clubs in order to raise their performance standards and foster interest in male choral singing as a lifelong activity. Nearly 100 years later, IMC’s activities are focused on the same goals. As Marshall Bartholomew said in 1961, our future is still bright ---- brothers, sing on!
In 2021, after many years of discussion, the IMC Board approved a motion to change the name of the organization once more, to IMC: The Tenor-Bass Choral Consortium.