Musical Daughters of Eli: Women Pioneers at Yale

Vocal ensembles

Fenno Heath Papers

Fenno Heath Papers

The Song Circus
Concert program of various vocal groups at Yale
Woolsey Hall
April 23, 1971

When co-education began at Yale College in 1969–1970, Fenno Heath, who had conducted the Yale Glee Club since 1953, faced a decision. The Glee Club had always been all male, and its repertoire was designed for men’s voices. (From time to time, the Glee Club had performed jointly with women’s choruses from schools such as Vassar College or Connecticut College.) Should Heath continue the men’s chorus tradition, while acknowledging the start of co-education by creating a separate Women’s Glee Club? Or should there be a single Glee Club that would perform a mixed chorus repertoire? In 1969–1970, Heath opted for separate Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs. But after one year of single-sex Glee Clubs, they merged in 1970, and the Yale Glee Club has been a mixed chorus ever since.
Here we see a program from each of those two seasons. The concert from February 1970 is by the Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs, performing both separately and together. (The Women’s Glee Club included Heath’s daughter, Sarah Heath, a member of that inaugural class of women.) The concert from April 1971 features the recently united Glee Club, along with an impressive array of other vocal ensembles.
The audio portion of this exhibit includes a recording by the short-lived Women’s Glee Club, as well as one by the mixed Glee Club just a few years later.

Yale Women’s Glee Club
Fenno Heath, Conductor
Benjamin Britten, “Deo Gracias,” from
A Ceremony of Carols
From Singapore Musical Society Presents
the Yale Glee Club
(Hollywood: Custom Fidelity, 1970)

Yale Glee Club
Fenno Heath, Conductor;
Shirley Jackson, Soprano
“Ride the Chariot,” arranged
by William Henry Smith
From 1973: The Yale Glee Club
(Hollywood: Custom Fidelity, 1973)

The Library's Historical Sound Recordings Collection contains Yale Glee Club LPs from 1970 and 1973. The former was from the year when there were separate men's and women's Glee Clubs. A selection by the Women's Glee Club is included here.

When the Glee Club was all men, W.H. Smith’s arrangement of “Ride the Chariot” (with a tenor soloist) was one of its signature pieces. After the merger, the Glee Club continued to perform it in a mixed chorus version, now with a soprano soloist.

Yale Daily News Historical Archive

“New and Old Blue Meet”
Yale Daily News
September 18, 1973

New Blue
“East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)”
From Since You Asked (1970, reissued in 1980 as Tenth Anniversary)

New Blue was the first women’s a cappella group at Yale; they were established in 1969–1970, the first year women were admitted to Yale College. Indeed, they claim to be Yale’s oldest undergraduate women’s organization of any kind.
In 1973, when this article was published in the Yale Daily News, New Blue still faced an extraordinary level of hostility. Members of the Whiffenpoofs disrupted a New Blue performance, which included parodies of Whiffs songs. In addition to the drunken hooting, one Whiff physically lifted a New Blue singer into the air and carried her off stage.
This event was by no means unique; one year later, on September 19, 1974, the Daily News again reported on the crass opposition New Blue faced, ranging from a sandwich thrown at them to shouts of “I hate equality.”
By 1981, New Blue had been joined by three other women’s a cappella groups: Proof of the Pudding, Something Extra, and Whim ’n Rhythm. In 2018, the Whiffenpoofs, Yale’s oldest a cappella group, admitted their first female member.

"East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)" was recorded by New Blue in their first year. It is still one of their signature songs 50 years later.