Finding Their Voices - Amherst College

performances. With one single exception very near its founding, 68 the Chapel Choir
seem to have been a target of ridicule in student publications. A survey of such student
writing reveals just how bad the group was seen to be.
The Horae Collegianae of 1838 gives a scathing account of a recent performance:
After all, the audience was no great shakes; but the music was. Its like we have
seldom heard, its equal never. True some wickedly inclined persons have spoken
rather disparagingly of it, comparing it to the winds bursting from the cave of
Aeolus; 69 to the clatter set up by Alcides to frighten the Stymphalian birds; 70 to
the music of the ungreased spheres; to a solo on a conch-shell with a chorus from
the pig-sty; to a simultaneous cackling of all the Hadley geese; and to several
other things not to be mentioned among respectable people; but it is very clear
they could have had 'no music in their souls,' and one greater than us has
pronounced upon such the suitable malediction. 71 No lover of music, we are sure,
will be apt to forget his entertainment on that day.
The 1848 College Cucumber gives a tongue-in-cheek announcement of an
upcoming Choir concert, suggesting that the choir does as much as it can to make its
concerts miserable:
The Chapel Choir give notice to, and warn the natives of North Pelham, that they
will hold one of their Diabolical Concerts, with Bull Fiddle and Flute
accompaniment, in the open air on the first rainy day. Children half price. Vocal
Babies thrown in. 72
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
68 The Shrine, 1, no. 6 (November 1832): 185. Student and Alumni Publications Collection, Box 13
(ACASC). The author compliments the group for the recent quality of their performances.
69 Aeolus was the ruler of the winds in Greek mythology.
70 This refers to the rattle given to Hercules (alternately named Alcides) by Hephaestus, the Greek god of
smiths, to aid him in defeating the Stymphalian birds, giant man-eating avians with bronze beaks and
deadly sharp metallic feathers. Hercules could not pass into the swamp in which they lived, and thus
needed something loud and abrasive enough to startle the birds into the air, where he would shoot them
down with arrows. The rattle gave such a terrible noise that it scared the birds into the air from miles away.
71 A reference to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is
not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”
72 The College Cucumber, 1, no. 1 (1848): 3. Student and Alumni Publications Collection, Box OS1
(ACASC). Bull Fiddle is another term for a Double Bass. The line about Vocal Babies suggests that
crying babies would be let in to the concert for free.
! 45!