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The usefulness and future promise of the Intercollegiate Musical Council are due to the idea of an undergraduate at Harvard who in 1913 felt strongly that fields of intercollegiate competition other than sports offered a great deal for the immediate participants and the public. This man, Albert Pickernell, during his senior year planned and held an intercollegiate glee club contest with Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia and Pennsylvania participat¬ing. Harvard, with Pickernell leading, won the contest. When he graduate in 1914, he went to New YOrk to work and joined the University Glee Club of New York. This Club, founded in 1894, is made up of men who sang in their college glee clubs and in its membership Pickernell found the kindred spirits to support him in his ideas. A first intercollegiate glee club contest was held in 1914 and three additional contest were held until the entry of the USA into World War I brought them to a close. In 1916 and 1917, Princeton, Amherst and Penn State joined the original four. The contests were resumed in 1921, eight clubs participating, New York University having joined the group. The number grew slowly. Then with funds from individuals and foundations. Harriet Steel Pickernell, an experienced concert manager, took up her duties as Executive Secretary and later, Marshall Bartholomew became part©time Executive Director. Through their efforts, the program was expanded to cover the entire country.
The printed program of the "15th Annual Intercollegiate Glee Club Contest", held in Carnegie Hall, New York, March 14, 1931 mentions 67 Glee Clubs competing in 11 Regional or State Contests. There were students from colleges in 24 states plus a Metropolitan Region which included Columbia, NYU, Fordham and Yale. George Washington University participated in this 1931 Contest as winner of the National Finals in the previous year. Also the following regional winners: Lafayette College (Penn State Association), Washington University (Missouri Valley Association), Capitol University (Ohio State Association), Williams College (New England Regional Association), Union College (New York State Association).
The first National Finals Contest to be held outside of New York City was in the Spring of 1932 when the ten winning Clubs of the Regional Contests met at St. Louis and Pomona College from Southern California won the Prize Cup, with Yale 2nd and Penn State 3rd.
The climax of all previous activities of the IMC was to have come in 1933 with an International Festival of Student Singers upon which Harriet Pickernell and I had been working in collaboration with the Organizing Committee of the Chicago Centennial World's Fair. Student Choruses were all set to come to Chicago from 8 European countries. The deepening economic depression in the United States and the rapidly increasing menace of the Nazi movement in Germany and the Fascisti in Italy combined to defeat that project.
In spite of the catastrophic sequence of disappointments mentioned in this "bit of history" the IMC reached a peak of activity in 1933©34 with a membership of 139 college glee clubs representing 19 Regional Associations.
The IMC in America remained active until World War II made not only the former National Finals but even the Regional Festivals impossible, although a few of the better organized groups, such as the Southern California and the New England Association remained active until the outbreak of the War.
The International Student Musical Council was founded in Munich in 1931. Sponsored by the Intercollegiate Musical Council and financed by Francis P. Garvan, a prominent New York philanthropist, the moving spirits in this undertaking were Dr. Friedrich Beck of the University of Munich and myself. Delegates from Student Choruses of Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States participated. A paralyzing blow to this movement was dealt when Friedrich Beck was murdered in the Nazi Blood Purge of June 30, 1934. Before that tragic happening, however, the ISMC had met in Zurich (1932) and in Copenhagen (1933). The concert tours in the United States by the Budapest University Chorus (1936), Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat of Helsinki(1937) and NorskeStudentersangforening of Oslo(1938) were sponsored by the IMC and the ISMC.
One more meeting of the International Council was held in Copenhagen in 1937 for the principal purpose of laying plans for the Centennial celebration of the founding of the Danske Studenter Sangforeningen which was to take place during the third week of September 1939 in Copenhagen. A chorus of fifty singers from the UGC of New York planned to join forces in Copenhagen with student choruses from ten European countries but the Nazi army invaded Poland September 1st of that year, the Second World War got underway and that was the end of that well planned international songfest.
From 1939 until 1952 the Council remained inactive. Then Frank H. Baxter, a former President of the University Glee Club, became President of the Council and took the initiative to revitalize it. He devoted his efforts and resources unstintingly to this end and in 1954 the first evidence of life was the highly successful Seminar at Purdue University. Successful Seminars were held in order as listed separately.
As to its formal organization, the Intercollegiate Musical Council was incorporated in New York State in 1920, the incorporators, officers and directors being members of the University Glee Club, each representing his alma mater on the Board, each keeping in touch with his campus and speaking for it in the deliberations of the Board. In 1957, the organization was changed so that individual male glee clubs became members, the large Board of forty or more elected by the University Glee Club was reduced to seventeen, two being elected by the University Glee Club as the Founder Member and the others being elected by the member clubs.
When Frank H. Baxter died in 1958, his friends and business associates established the Baxter Fund which made possible the 1961 Prize Song Contest.