Director of Choral Activities
Senior Lecturer on Music
Dr. Marvin received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Choral Music from the University of Illinois, a Master of Arts in Choral Conducting from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music History, Theory, and Composition from the UCSB. He was Director of Choral Activities at Vassar College (beginning in 1969) before coming to Harvard in 1978. Dr. Marvin conducted the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and offered courses in Choral Conducting and Choral Analysis/Interpretation.
Marvin has conducted 80 choral-orchestral works and is a conductor, teacher, author, scholar, editor, composer, and arranger. He has written on subjects ranging from choral intonation to Renaissance Choral Performance, including The Conductor’s Process and Five Centuries of Choral Music in Essays in Honor of Howard Swan, Pendragon Press, Mastery of Choral Ensemble, E. C. Schirmer, Choral Excellence: Elements of Successful Leadership, and in the Choral Journal of the American Choral Directors Association, and Perfection and Naturalness: A Practical Guide to Renaissance Choral Performance in Oxford University Press. In 2019, Dr. Marvin’s book Emotion in Choral Singing was published by GIA Publications. Dr. Marvin sustained and expanded a choral environment rich enough to attract hundreds of students to his program, from the beginning singer to the advanced musician. To the traditional choruses, HGC, RCS, HRCM, he added the Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus, a town-gown community chorus, and the Choir in Progress, a voice and musicianship training ensemble. The choral program at Harvard was named the top collegiate choral program in the country by Classical Singer magazine. Some 50 of his former Harvard students now hold significant choral positions in the United States.