Mahoney published several spoken-word CDs, including one titled Freedom: America’s Literary Voices (2006) that featured the poem “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Click below to hear his rendering.

Thomas J. Hurley (1864–1931), Class of 1885, is best known as the composer of “Hail! Alma Mater!” and “For Boston.” But the prolific and dedicated alumnus also wrote other pieces, the scores of which are held in the University’s Burns Library Archives. Jeremiah W. McGrann, associate professor of the practice of music, arranged for the performance of three Hurley songs by a quartet of students and the music department’s administrative assistant, tenor Alexander Wolniak.

Tenor: Alexander Wolniak. Pianist: Jeremiah W. McGrann

The Lake-Street Car

Verse 1
Down the hill on the run we go
To catch the Lake-street car.
Ev’ry day it’s the same old tune
To the “L” by the Lake street car.
There’s seats for sixty, we fill them all,
One hundred and twenty strong,
And the starter whistles his little pipe
When he hears our cheerful song: Then
Run, run, run a little faster if you can,
For a mile and a half isn’t far;
And I’d rather have a seat, 
Than be riding on my feet
To the “L” in a Lake-street car.

Verse 2
Safety First is the golden rule,
Except on the Lake-street car.
Safety last for the pass-en-jaire
To the “L” on the Lake street car.
They jump the switches, they sweep the curves,
You never can hear the gong;
And the motorman tootles his little toot
As he sings this cheerful song: I’ll
Run, run, run a little faster if I can,
For the Subway isn’t very far;
I never hear the bell, 
Coz I’m working for the “L”
For the “L” on a Lake-street car.

Tenor: Alexander Wolniak. Pianist: Jeremiah W. McGrann

BC Baseball Song

Verse 1
O, Yes! We’re the little boys from Boston
And we never could play ball.
Just a hit or two and then a run or two,
And that’s no good at all!
But somehow or other when the game is o’er,
And we count them up, we bawl;
O, Me! O, My! But we’re the little boys from Boston,
And we never could play ball.

Verse 2
O, Yes! We’re the little boys from Boston
Shortstop’s arm is glass, the pitcher has no class,
The umpire’s fierce, that’s all!
But somehow or other when the game is o’er,
And we count them up, we bawl;
O, Me! O, My! But we’re the little boys from Boston,
And we never could play ball.

Quartet (from left): Katherine Wullert ’15, Mary Aidan Hanrahan ’15, Christian Nelson ’16, and Peter Igo ’15. Pianist: Jeremiah W. McGrann

Veni Creator Spiritus

Veni Creator Spiritus,
Mentes tuorum visita:
Imple superna gratia
Quae Tu creasti pectora.

Qui diceris Paraclitus,
Altissimi donum Dei,
Fons vivus, ignis, caritas,
Et spiritalis unctio.

“God’s Grandeur” had its premiere on November 9, 2013, in Trinity Chapel on the Newton Campus, sung by the University Chorale under the direction of John Finney. A chamber orchestra of professional musicians also performed.

“God’s Grandeur,” second movement:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

   It gathers to a greatness, like an ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

   And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ (1877)

Select audio

Two of the selections are among the “top 25 most-performed holiday songs,” according to the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers: American composer Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” (1949) and “Carol of the Bells” (1916) by Ukrainian Mykola Leontovych. The “Hallelujah,” from Handel’s Messiah oratorio, is nowadays performed during the Christmas season; originally this 18th-century work was presented during Lent, and was likely conceived as Easter music.

Musical Selections:

Total time: 14:32

Nanotechnology—working with matter at the atomic or molecular level—offers the promise of a huge range of innovations, from improved manufacturing techniques to new medical treatments and diagnostic tools. @BC presents an interview with Michael Naughton, chair of the physics department, in which he describes three nanotechnology projects at Boston College aimed at tapping renewable energy sources: developing nano-coaxial cable for highly efficient solar cells; using nanoparticles to create thermoelectric material that converts heat to electricity; and constructing “nano-nets” from silicon, which can split molecules of water to release hydrogen. Naughton also discusses the recent acquisition of facilities and equipment, which have made the University a center for nanotechnology research in the Boston area.

Total time: 16:07

Who was the most remarkable woman in the history of Boston College? Which University president has been underrated? What will future scholars say were significant events on the Heights at the beginning of the 21st century? These were some of the questions put to Thomas O’Connor ’49, MA’50, University Historian and professor emeritus, in an interview with @BC on July 18. He is author of Ascending the Heights: A Brief History of Boston College From Its Founding to 2008 (Linden Lane Press, 2008), a succinct account of the University from when it was a gleam in the eye of Boston Bishop John Fitzpatrick to the 14,000-student, cosmopolitan institution it is today, comprising some 135 buildings on 384 acres.

O’Connor began teaching history at Boston College in 1950 and served as department chair from 1962 to 1970. In addition to several textbooks and general works on 19th-century America, he has written 14 works on the city of Boston, including Bibles, Brahmins and Bosses: A Short History of Boston (Boston Public Library, 1976); Civil War Boston: Homefront and Battlefield (Northeastern, 1997); the bestselling The Boston Irish: A Political History (Northwestern University, 1995); and The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845 (University of Massachusetts, 2006). He won an Emmy Award in 1996 for his role as historical consultant and narrator for the WGBH documentary Boston: The Way It Was. Since 1999 he has served as University Historian, a role he describes as being “part of the collective memory of Boston College.”

Total time: 15:55

When Elizabeth Kensinger was a psychology graduate student working with aging adults and Alzheimer’s disease patients, she realized that although it seemed obvious to caregivers that people were more likely to remember experiences associated with strong emotions, most researchers studying memory measured “college-aged students’ abilities to remember lists of unrelated words or line drawings.” Now an assistant professor of psychology and director of Boston College’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, she investigates how age and emotions influence the formation and retrieval of memories.

“Tasks used in our laboratory have ranged from asking octogenarians to report what they can remember about photographs to asking BC hockey players to remember positive and negative events from the hockey season while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan,” says Kensinger. The research, supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Dana Foundation, has validated her intuition that “we cannot understand memory processes without understanding how they are influenced by emotion and aging.” In dozens of articles and presentations during the last eight years she has reported that emotions significantly influence whether and how people remember experiences, that an emotion’s positive or negative valence affects the accuracy of recollections (negative emotions enhance accuracy), and that neural imaging techniques reveal physical changes in the brain indicative of a connection between strong emotions and memory.

This spring Kensinger was named a Searle Scholar—the first Boston College faculty member to receive this honor, which provides “exceptionally creative and productive young scientists with sufficient funds to work on their best ideas.” Boston College also awarded her its Junior Faculty Distinguished Research Award on May 2. @BC presents an interview with Elizabeth Kensinger, conducted on June 19, in which she discusses her recent work.

Most of the songs are long forgotten, although former LSOE faculty member Vincent Nuccio ’49, a long-time performer in the University Chorale, recalls singing two other songs in the book, “Maroon and Gold,” by George Dennis, and “Sweep Down the Field,” by Theodore Marier ’34. University historian Thomas O’Connor ’49 says he always thought “Sweep Down the Field” was “the best of the bunch.” He recalls, “Groups of students would be brought together and taught these songs by student leaders,” and the music would be sung at pre-game rallies.

Boston’s Old Corner Books offers a copy of Songs of Boston College, in “very good” condition, for $105.60, but @BC is pleased to present online much of what is to be enjoyed in this collection. Our production staff has scanned the pages and prepared an edition that enables viewers to view and print each page. It also contains an audio track of the piano part for 10 of the songs. (Due to the quality of the original images, three of the songs could not be translated to audio.)