The Handel Society of Dartmouth

Abstract

In the summer of 1807 there was little reason for President John Wheelock to be happy with the state of music at Dartmouth College. The Musical Choir, which used to be one of the highlights of commencement exercises, was practically silent now. Yet at Wheelock's own graduation, the first Dartmouth commencement 1771, the choir sang two anthems, one an original composition by Frisbee and Ripley, graduating seniors educated for missionaries among remote Indians.' In 1791 the Musical Choir gave a concert of vocal and instrumental music as a prelude, then opened the exercises with an anthem by John Hubbard, A.M. (Dartmouth, 1785), and concluded the program by singing Champlain by Samuel Holyoke, in a manner that showed the sublimity of their art. 2 The college even awarded musical reformer Holyoke an honorary bachelor's degree that day. For the next ten years the choir joined the other college clubs that presented individual oratorical days during commencement week. It gave a musical performance and heard an oration by a musically talented senior. And it kept abreast of new developments music. One of its number, a Mr. Crage, attended a singing school at Exeter, New Hampshire, directed by the contentious, opinionated reformer Andrew Law. Crage boasted to Law that he and the other Dartmouth students had begun to develop a taste for such music, and to be sick of the common kind.'3 As late as 1803 President Wheelock was given reason to be proud