My initial visit to UVA’s Special Collections library was marked by an old transcript from Arthur Fickénscher consisting of college football songs—”The Good Old Song,” “Virginia Hail All Hail,” and “Rotunda Song” to name a few. While allegedly not composed by Fickénscher, his arrangements appear to be the earliest physical transcription of these songs otherwise only performed orally at sporting events. While not all songs are still frequently performed, these songs continue to be memorialized at UVA in many forms and still bolster the college pride of young college students like they did in the early 20th century.

The physical copy of Fickénscher’s arrangements is very simple: it’s three or four thick card pages with a host of college songs arranged and transcribed. The first one is “The Good Old Song,” which is actually sung differently today than its transcription in Fickénscher’s work. More songs like “Just Another Touchdown for U. V-a” is one of the explicitly-labeled “football” songs whose lyrics contain language about football and frequently makes reference to the “boys” of college football rivals including Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, and notably North Carolina. UVA’s rivalry with UNC is dubbed “The South’s Oldest Rivalry” beginning in 1892 (Virginia Returns to Scott Stadium to Host Tar Heels), and Fickénscher’s transcription includes a rivalry song about UNC titled “Oh! Carolina.” The biggest question I had was this: why did it take so long for these transcriptions to exist?

Fickénscher has an extensive background as a choral teacher beginning as early as 1896 “where he taught and coached young singers and studied the potentialities of the human voice” (A Guide to the Arthur Fickénscher Papers). He then established a studio in Germany in 1911 giving vocal instruction. It is no surprise, then, that Fickénscher’s role as the new Music Department director at the University of Virginia in 1920 led to a foundational restructuring of UVA’s Glee Club (where he also served as music director) (Contributors to Virginia Glee Club Wiki). His football arrangements are still a core part of the Glee Club’s performance today and can be found in any of their releases on streaming services. In fact, their version of “Virginia, Hail, All Hail!” is listed as a Fickénscher arrangement.

Beyond his role as UVA’s newest music director, Fickénscher was also Christ Episcopal Church’s organist for the years he was in Charlottesville (A Guide to the Arthur Fickénscher Papers). This role makes sense given his background as a vocal instructor. While I could not find any detailed artifacts from Christ Church’s parish records, I did find his name listed in a book detailing the history of Christ Church from its founding to 2000. Not only was Fickénscher the organist, but he was the fully fledged music director/minister there. I wonder if Fickénscher also lent his vocal instruction background to the Church choir. He may have brought the second artifact I looked at: a collection of communion hymns arranged for organ and four-part vocal harmony. It seemed like it was featured in a collection of religious hymns, but only Fickénscher’s works were present. It included typical communion songs like the “Sanctus,” which was different in Fickénscher’s arrangement than the one we sing in Christ Church today. There were also a lot more communion hymns in Fickénscher’s collection than are featured in the present day communion service. Then again, communion for episcopal churches in the 1920s was very different than it is today, notably by the lack of congregational participation and the inclusion of the revised version of the Book of Common Prayer in 1928 (Liturgical Movement).

Both of the artifacts I studied assert Fickénscher as a skilled vocal arranger. His background in vocal instruction also must have impacted the UVA Glee Club to a great degree. His pursuit of music at UVA was ultimately marked by his scholarship of original compositions, mainly “his major unfinished orchestral-choral symphonic poem, The Land East of the Sun” (A Guide to the Arthur Fickénscher Papers). His compositions were modernistic in nature: “his work reflected contemporary trends and was cast in a ‘sensuous mysticism’ that intrigued many of his musical colleagues” (A Guide to the Arthur Fickénscher Papers). However, to say Fickénscher’s music was truly modernist would be a mistake; while his compositions focused on “the new”, they weren’t so much concerned with colonialist thought of “breaking through what [modernists] saw as the now-atrophied structures of art music” (Perchard). These two definitions of modernism are important to understand as we put it in the context of Fickénscher’s compositions. Fickénscher’s “modernist” qualities were purely those that were looking to “the new”: “making music that departed from tradition in order to speak of life today (Perchard). While Fickénscher breached this theme of modernism in his compositional work, his impact on vocal music at the University of Virginia would ultimately be the modernist legacy he left behind for today.

The Virginia Gentlemen, the oldest acapella group at UVA since their origins in 1953, grew out of UVA’s Glee Club. While Fickénscher did not have a direct impact in the forming of the group, his leadership of the Glee Club and arrangements certainly contributed to it. After the Virginia Gentlemen came a host of other acapella groups—the Hullabahoos, the Virginia Belles, the Silhooettes, etc.—which now runs the UVA student “choral” music scene, overshadowing the original Glee Club. Even the University Singers founded in 1957 have outpaced the Glee Club, as Usingers are “UVA’s flagship choral ensemble” as stated on their website (Our History). In this way, the “modernism” that Fickénscher promulgates takes the form of the University’s eventual acapella groups and Usingers, which still perform some of the college football songs that Fickénscher arranged in the archival papers mentioned above. While Fickéscher’s arrangements themselves are not necessarily performed, there’s no doubt that his transcriptions paved the way for future arrangers.

Fickénscher’s skill as a vocal instructor and choral arranger have inadvertently led to the modern student choral music scene at UVA. Without his leadership and impact on the Glee Club and the University’s new music department, the Usingers and acapella groups would not exist in the form they do today, and their repertoire would look different—his arrangements of college football songs have ingrained themselves into the culture of UVA. After sporting events, we still sing the “Good Old Song,” but the Glee Club continues to honor Fickénscher through their performances of “Virginia, Hail, All Hail!,” “Oh! Carolina,” “Hike, Virginia,” and “Virginia Yell Song” to name a few. I think it’s wonderfully unique to have both this modern representation of UVA’s choral groups and the time-honored traditional Glee Club rooted within the culture of the University of Virginia, and it is equally as wonderful to have artifacts from Fickénscher himself on display.

Works Cited

“A Guide to the Arthur Fickénscher Papers”. Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library,https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc%2Fviu01897.xml. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

Contributors to Virginia Glee Club Wiki. “Virginia Glee Club.” Virginia Glee Club Wiki, Fandom, Inc., virginiagleeclub.fandom.com/wiki/Virginia_Glee_Club. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

Fickénscher, Arthur. “College Songs”. Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, n.d. Accessed 13 Feb. 2025.

“History.” The Virginia Gentlemen, Est. 1953, thevirginiagentlemen.org/readme-2. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

“Liturgical Movement, The.” The Episcopal Church, www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/liturgical-movement-the/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

“Our History.” Our History | University Singers, usingers.virginia.edu/history. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

Perchard, Tom, et al. Twentieth-Century Music in the West: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2022.

“Virginia, Hail, All Hail! By the Virginia Glee Club on Apple Music.” Apple Music - Web Player, 21 Sept. 2010, music.apple.com/us/song/virginia-hail-all-hail/402535089.

“Virginia Returns to Scott Stadium to Host Tar Heels.” Virginia Cavaliers Official AthleticSite, https://virginiasports.com/, 24 Oct. 2024, virginiasports.com/news/2024/10/23/virginia-returns-to-scott-stadium-to-host-tar-heels/.