“Holden is a real community of singers, so I’m not just friends with people in Collegium,” says Allison S. Brandt ’10, President of Collegium Musicum, “I’m friends with everyone else.”

Marvin has been successful in creating the immeasurably close community of the Holden choruses due to his sincere interest in developing close relationships with his students. “He genuinely cares about the students in each of the three groups,” says Kristina R. Yee ’10, the Radcliffe Choral Society Historian. “I think that Jim is a very fatherly conductor figure.”

Students across the three choruses fondly discuss the ‘Marvincues’ he holds at his house three times annually. These feature the infamous ‘Marvinburgers,’ a burger so thick that it’s charred on the outside and rare on the inside, and, during the ‘Christmascues’ of yore, Marvin’s festive eggnog.

The stories from the Christmascues especially are so heartwarming that they would be a welcome addition to anyone’s holiday experience. Piling into school buses on a cold winter’s night, the members of all three Holden Choirs drive the half-hour it takes to reach Marvin’s house in Lexington, Massachusetts. There, they bask in the glow of the fire that Marvin tends (carefully, as if it were the fourth Holden chorus), drink eggnog, and converse with his oft-referenced wife Polly.

After an initial period of comfortable conversation, the three choruses, totaling over 100 students, crowd around Marvin’s piano to practice Christmas carols. Then they take to the streets of Lexington, caroling for the neighbors and hurling snowballs at each other, weather permitting.

For many, the Holden Choirs become the dominant aspect of their social scene; they provide lifelong friends and constitute the most memorable part of college. Some alumni joke about the fact that they came to several choral reunions before attending a class reunion. “My parents would accuse me of concentrating in Glee Club, minoring in the band and occasionally taking classes,” said nostalgic alumnus David F. Jackson ’82.

This tight-knit community only strengthens in the intense rehearsals for which Marvin is known. Even the lengthiest rehearsals are rendered bearable by Marvin’s fierce energy and ridiculous teaching-phrases, known as Marvinisms. The singers collect these bizarre phrases in their music, send them out over email chains, and eventually create year-end books with pages devoted to them.

“These usually don’t get explained ever,” laughs Molly C. Storer ’11, manager of the Radcliffe Choral Society. “Sometimes they get explained at the beginning of the year but he uses them so often that it gets to the point where he could say something that seems totally random to anyone outside of the [Holden Choirs], but we know exactly what it means and respond to it.” When a chorus isn’t grasping a passage, Marvin shouts, waves his arms and utters seemingly incomprehensible torrents of nonsense. This seems slightly ridiculous until the chorus tries the passage again—and performs it infinitely better than they did before Marvin’s outburst.

“Every rehearsal, I’m constantly kept on my toes—there’s nothing boring about rehearsals with Jim,” says Brandt. “He’s loud, and crazy, and funny, and energetic, and sometimes scary, but just to get us to do something that would be outside our comfort zone to make the music better.”

A commonly cited Marvinism is his advice for singers trying to hit a high note: “You’re either pregnant or you’re not.” He also frequently refers to “Santa’s bag of psychological problems,” the baggage that a distraught Santa carries around, which prevents him from effectively carrying out his job. He encourages students to leave their bags on the roof.

LEGEND AND LEGACY

Tales of Marvin have been passed down from students too, and they form the subtext on which his unusual rehearsal demeanor sits. Storer passed on a popular story from a Radcliffe Choral Society tour, which featured a karaoke bar in Tennessee, an RCS rendition of “I Will Survive,” and—most importantly—Marvin’s unbuttoning his collared shirt, unveiling his neon pink t-shirt, and swinging the former over his head as he danced.

These stories are so deeply ingrained in the institutional memory of the Holden Choirs—a  memory that stretches back further than the Crimson’s archives—that whenever a Holden singer discusses anything that the choruses have done, they’ll use the first person plural. As a result, 19-year-old students with laptops in bag and cell phones in pocket develop a verbal tic of referring to high jinks they enjoyed during the late nineteenth century or early 1970s.

In many ways, the history of the Holden Choirs mirrors that of Harvard. From the creation of Collegium, which coincided with the merger with Radcliffe, to the lyrics’ change in gender in Charles Gounoud’s “Domine Salvum Fac”—the song that is traditionally sung at Harvard Presidential Installations—to accommodate current President Drew Gilpin Faust, the Choirs have participated actively in Harvard history.

These deep historical roots help produce the remarkable alumni culture surrounding the choruses. The alumni of the groups are extremely committed; almost five hundred alumni of Marvin’s Holden Choirs plan to return for the Holden Reunion Weekend. The weekend will kick off on Friday with a joint performance of all three Holden Choirs called “A Celebration of the Career of Dr. Jameson Marvin.” The concert will feature the premiere of “Song of Awakening,” a piece commissioned from the composer Robert Kyr for the occasion.