On hearing the Club's performance of Brahm's "Requiem" Serge Koussevitsky said, "Harvard has the best-trained chorus I have ever heard in any country of the world . . ."

When Davison was abroad on his 1926 Sabbatical leave, the biggest storm in the glee club's history broke. The HGC bolted the Intercollegiate Glee Club contest after objecting to the required program each club had to sing.

Davison cabled the club's resignation from the Intercollegiate Glee Club on the grounds that the selections were "silly sentimental mush" and not in accord with the dignity of any college contest. Chief offender was the prize song, Horatio Parker's "The Lamp in the West."

"Eliminate the sentimental mush or we withdraw!" Davison's ultimatum read. "The programms stands as originally submitted," ran the reply.

This was not the first time the HGC went esoteric. Davison had objected to the prize song in 1921, and only agreed to enter the contest that year on the understanding that future prize songs should have every contestant's approval. For the next three years Harvard essentially chose the song.

Although the other contestants approved of the prize song, Davison objected and requested that under the 1921 unanimity rule another number be chosen. The contest committee replied tersely: "The song was too simple to suit Harvard."

Reaction to the decision was immediate. The press was quick to point out that recently the HGC had not been winning the championships--in fact, it had finished seventh the previous year. One Boston paper attributed the withdrawal to "snobbish superiority." Calling the move "poor sportsmanship" the Harvard Club of Kansas City urged Davison to reenter next year.

Except for the one-man club in Singapore, all the other Harvard clubs soon followed suit. Alumni pointed out that an alumnus (Francis Pickernell '14) had selected the ill-fated prize song, which had been written by a Yale man.

In January of 1926 Thomas W. Slocum '90, former member of the Board of Overseers, objected to the HGC omitting "Fair Harvard" from New York programs "because the music was not of sufficiently high grade" and suggested the glee club call itself "The Harvard Gloom Club." Woodworth termed the omission "an unfortunate mistake."

Finally Davison quelled some alumni protest by stating that the term sentimental mush "was merely a press fabrication."

April 1, 1931 saw the dawn of another new era--the glee club went on the air in a broadcast for a philanthropic organization. Six years later the club broadcast a show to France by short wave.

Perhaps the club's greatest achievement came in the 1931 and '32 performances of Each's difficult Mass in B miny of which Boston critic H. R. Partewrote: "It was choral singing unsurpassed at Symphony Hall in this generation in matched in those days in America in for performance of the E-minor mass."

The HGC has added for innovations since Davison retired, except that new members are added only on the basis of vote and quartet trials to keep the membership down to 140, and strict training and 11 p.m. bed hours are no longer of served on trips. But the Glee Club has never lost its hierarchy; it boasts more assistant managers (20) than the football team.