Tour “homecoming” concerts of college performing ensembles are fun to watch. Usually held within a few weeks of the ensemble’s return, these performances have an underpinning of fresh memories, inside jokes among the musicians, and an overall sense of pride. The Princeton University Glee Club recently returned from a tour of Paris and its environs, and it was very clear from Friday night’s concert in Richardson Auditorium that the 80-voice chorus was very proud to give the audience a taste of the music presented in Europe. Glee Club conductor Gabriel Crouch programmed the concert to show the depth of choral activities at Princeton, both in the level of music performed and the talent within the ensemble. The tour repertoire featured a cross-section of European sacred and secular music which the Glee Club used to demonstrate precise choral skills and a rich sound.

Double chorus works have traditionally been a product of continental Europe, but Mr. Crouch found an intriguing example from contemporary Britain. John Tavener’s choral works usually include edgy chord streams and harmonies, which the Glee Club sang effectively in Tavener’s Hymn to the Mother of God. Mr. Crouch followed this piece with a more traditional double chorus work from the late Renaissance, and the Glee Club sang Ruggiero Giovanelli’s Jubilate Deo with the same color and bite as the Tavener, paying particular attention to word accents and the multiple transitions among meters. This period of double chorus anthem was full of vocal lines running up and down scales, and the Glee Club brought out the rolling passages cleanly. Both the Tavener and Giovanelli pieces would have worked well in any of the Glee Club tour’s French cathedral venues, rich with centuries of choral music embedded in the rafters.

Mr. Crouch focused much of the rest of the concert on music of less familiar regions of Europe. Moving to the back of the Richardson stage, the Glee Club was able to produce a sound which reverberated well in the stone shell, demonstrating a nice melodic women’s sound and, in the Cyrillus Kreek psalm setting, appropriate Russian chording. Music from former Eastern European nations resurfaced later in the concert, with folksong settings from Bulgaria and Romania in pieces full of speedy texts and rhythms sung with some of the vocal edge one hears from choirs of this region. Mr. Crouch gave a former student a chance to shine as conductor, as Emily Sung directed a very nice setting of an Italian folk song, and Mr. Crouch joined the chorus. The Glee Club was joined onstage for one selection by the University Chamber Choir, which performed Sir William Harris’s Faire is the Heaven with clarity and good attention to the harmonies and lyrical internal lines. There were many languages represented in this concert, and both choral ensembles had the variety of texts well in hand.

The Princeton University Music Department has committed to “composition, performance, and scholarship,” and the Glee Club furthered this mission this past year by sponsoring a composition contest within the ensemble. Sophomore Ryan McCarty won this year’s competition with a setting of texts from the 11th-century Cambridge Songs. Mr. McCarty retained the medieval nature of Carissima by beginning the piece with chant-like music at intervals of octaves and fifths, sung by the men, as it would have been in the 11th century. Sound built with each vocal entrance, leading to a clear dialog between men and women on the text “noli tardare” (“make haste”). Mr. McCarty composed this piece with a fresh style and refreshing sound, and with an easy flow to the music, ending the piece on a joyous high note. Creating this choral competition not only gave the Glee Club an opportunity for its members to stretch themselves creatively, but in the case of Mr. McCarty’s work, also resulted in a piece which could go far in the choral arena.

The Princeton University Glee Club seems to be touring overseas every two or three years. With its clean singing and precise choral techniques, the ensemble has proven to be yet another solid representative of the University’s music program.