At seven in the evening three times a week distraught baritones may be seen sprinting up to Sever Hall, for Associate Professor G. Wallace Woodworth starts his Glee Club rehearsals on time. With a gigantic sweep of his muscular arms, he sets two hundred pairs of vocal cords vibrating in unison. Late comers tiptoe to their positions to swell the sound that spreads beyond the Yard dormitories. For an hour, or three if necessary, Woody conducts furiously, occasionally shouting "that's it" into the music, or slapping the table with an emphatic "no." Then the singers stop on a temporal dime, and without perceptible damage to the tempo of the rehearsal Woody throws in an anecdote about "Koussie" in a rough approximation of Koussevitzky's English. The atmosphere is always spirited, though not always so gay. When he uses his fist instead of his palm on the desk, everyone sits up and gives the best he or she has.

Arriving at Harvard in 1920 as a Freshman, he immediately joined the Glee Club, which had just become a major College organization under Professor "Doc" Davison. After a few weeks, he flunked his quartet trials, then as now the deciding factor in Glee Club membership; so he decided he would be an accompanist with the club. Woody delights in telling how Davison suggested that he "go play the drums in the band." Nevertheless, he must have made a moderately good accompanist, for when he graduated in 1924 he became conductor of the Radcliffe Choral Society and assistant conductor of the Harvard Glee Club.

Elected conductor of the Glee Club in 1934, Woodworth has gradually swung to a belief in the strong and simple in music as well as in a love for Nantucket and old railroad locomotives. Listening to recordings made seven years ago, he says blushingly, "I don't see how I could have been so romantic then." Although Woodworth follows Professor Davison's precedent in presenting a majority of classical choral music, including a yearly rendition of Beethoven's Ninth with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he still has a weakness for modern American classics, ranging from Hindemith to "Casey Jones."

Disliking nothing more than musical sluggishness, he keeps the Harvard and Radcliffe singers doting by his sustained vitality rather than by the everpresent Koussie Woody interludes. His worst comment is, "You haven't got the guts to sing," but it is followed by an expansive smile, and suddenly the volume swells miraculously. Glee Club members recall a rehearsal of "Casey Jones," in which the coaching was so graphic that a Radcliffe girl who had wandered in decided to leave. Since then rehearsals have been closed to the fairer sex.