from the archives
RL’s Musical Legacy
by CHRIS HEATON
One of the joyous occasions lost this winter to the pandemic was the collective singing of Handel’s Messiah—an annual, community event initiated early in the tenure of Kerry Brennan’s headmastership, which began in 2004. Mr. Brennan had been Roxbury Latin’s music director from 1978 to 1986, fresh from Amherst College, where we also got the tune to the Founder’s Song, put into lyrics in 1912 by longtime faculty member Clarence Gleason. When Mr. Brennan first started at RL, he wanted “to offer a different pitch, literally and figuratively” to the choral program. Under his leadership, the Glee Club doubled in size and began its annual performance tours. While Recital Halls have long been a feature of RL, Mr. Brennan sought to bring in more professional musicians to perform for the boys and faculty. He said, “We have the opportunity with the Hall program to have excellence of all kinds, including from professional musicians.” He wants the boys to “develop a standard of musicianship that enables them to appreciate quality music.”
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Christmas gift record of Francis Rogers to alma mater.
Handel composed Messiah in 1741 while he was in England, and it was first performed in Dublin the next year. While there were no grads in 1741, two RL boys from the Class of 1740 were then at Harvard. And what a pair they were: Sibley’s Harvard Graduates slams Isaac Bowles as “not a man of regular or sober habits.”1 Perhaps he partnered too much with his RL classmate, Thomas Brinley, a loyalist during the American Revolution, who owned a distillery. Both boys had fathers who served in the Roxbury militia, and Brinley’s eponymous grandfather helped found King’s Chapel, Boston. During the American War of Independence, Brinley fled to Canada, then England, and his property was seized by Massachusetts.2 Messiah was premiered in this country by Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society in 1818, “the oldest continually performing arts organization in the United States.” It’s been performed every year since, making it the longest consecutive annual performance in
