Portrait of the Musical Clubs, which included quartets and string groups. From The Trinity Tripod, 1906-04-10

Numerous quartets, or four-person singing groups, have been formed by Trinity students over the years, though the pinnacle of their efflorescence occurred in 1887, beginning a brief “Golden Age” for Trinity’s Glee Club. It was during this academic year that the Glee Club grew significantly and had such success that several offshoots proliferated from its ranks as a result. A Glee Club quartet, as well as quartets associated with five different fraternities and the three upper classes were formed at that time.

In an issue of The Trinity Tablet from 1882, a few years before the musical culture of the campus would come to flourish, a student complained about the dearth of quartets at Trinity, despite a wealth of talent among students. “[Q]uartettes,” he wrote, “can be formed which would afford much pleasure and profit to the members thereof, and which would be a credit to the college in general. At other colleges quartettes are formed, which are not only heard and enjoyed within college limits, but which are in demand elsewhere as social attraction, and why should not Trinity emulate their example?”

Indeed, the Glee Club and the quartets formed from its talent would perform in venues beyond Trinity’s campus, well into the turn of the century. Most commonly, the Trinity quartets would travel to various cities throughout the Northeast to perform at Alumni Association dinners. However, Trinity’s quartets were also a fixture of local community-facing entertainment: they performed in local Hartford venues like the Asylum Hill Baptist Church and Hartford Golf Club, as well as several performances at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Thompsonville, Connecticut. In the spring of 1906, several quartets would plan to travel as far as Brooklyn, New York, with the help of a couple of alumni who had settled there, to perform at two different charitable benefits.

History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, p. 222.

The Trinity Tripod, 1913-10-28.

The Trinity Tripod, 1907-03-01.

The Trinity Tripod, 1906-12-11.

The Trinity Tripod, 1906-04-10.

The Trinity Ivy, 1886.

The Trinity Tablet, 1882-01-28.