Music Dept History

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HISTORY OF THE PASADENA CITY COLLEGE MUSIC DEPARTMENT
Facts assembled by Paul Kilian, April 2008
In the year 1924, following passionate community dialogue, a $2,994,000 bond issue was passed (by a 2 to 1 margin) to build John Muir Technical High School, and to enlarge Pasadena High School. This would allow for the establishment of Pasadena Junior College on the PHS Colorado Street campus, giving PHS the 11th and 12th grades, with the new junior college comprising grades 13 and 14.
And so, in the fall of 1924, the incipient college music program began—initially as an expansion of the high school program—under the energetic and creative leadership of the choral director, Miss Lula Claire Parmley. She was assisted by the Glee Club director, Abraham Miller, and Hubert Parker who conducted the orchestra and the ROTC band. The spring production that year, which in the ensuing years would grow into school-wide extravaganzas involving hundreds of students, was the operetta The Student Prince.
In 1925, with the addition of the 14th grade, the boys’ and girls’ glee clubs were joined by the new men’s glee club, conceived to accommodate college level students. A women’s glee club was added the following year. Now in its second year, the college music curriculum already included courses in harmony, music history, piano, and individual help in instruments and voice.
From its early days, performance has been an important aspect of the music program. In 1929 the Oratorio Society was formed, the high school and junior college orchestra were combined, and new band uniforms were purchased for participation in the Tournament of Roses Parade. Audre L. Stong became band director in 1930, and by virtue of his entrepreneurial gifts as promoter and showman par excellence, band membership exploded to include 135 students and contained within itself eleven smaller sub-ensembles that also performed widely throughout the community. Because the band was primarily an all-male group, a separate girl’s band was formed in 1932 which existed for several years. By now the choral organizations included not only the men’s and women’s glee clubs, but also the Voice Choir (a preparatory glee club), and the eleventh year mixed chorus. Additionally there were two select choirs: the Nysaean Singers for women and the men’s Euterpean Singers. Rounding out the vocal ensembles was the new A Capella Choir.
Typical of the grand performances given by the department during those years was their traditional Christmas Gloria. The1935 production involved some 400 students including singers, instrumentalists, dancers and dramatists. The following spring’s rendition of Mendelssohn’s Elijah featured over 300 students. The department also put on spring musicals, operettas, and the like. Held in either Sexson Auditorium or at the Pasadena Civic, it was not uncommon for them to run three to four performances with over-flow crowds at each. In those days, before the influx of television and other home media, local communities looked to their schools to provide much of their musical entertainment. Therefore all of the college ensembles were heavily deployed throughout the area, performing at schools, churches, service clubs, and even on the radio. In the school year 1939-40, for example, the five vocal ensembles gave over 86 performances, the separate male quartet 45, the Melody Maids—a female string ensemble—gave 46, the Bulldog Band, 50, their smaller band ensembles another 27, and the orchestra 9 concerts, for a grand total of 273 performances for the school year!
This remarkable profusion of performances by a junior college music program ensued from the philosophy of the music chair, Miss Parmley—a philosophy that continues to this day—of providing music, when feasible, to whomever asked for it, in the belief that the Music Department was a natural agency to represent the college in the community and, in the process, assure the