The Yellow and Blue
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Charles_Mills_Gayley.jpg/155px-Charles_Mills_Gayley.jpg)
The Yellow and Blue is the alma mater of the University of Michigan, written by Charles M. Gayley. An 1878 graduate, Gayley composed the lyrics in 1886 while he was a professor of English and Latin at UM. He was motivated to write the song in hopes of winning a $20 prize from the student editors of the yearbook (The Palladium). As he wrote the lyrics, Gayley was thinking of the school colors, "azure blue and maize." Ultimately, the song became a paean to the color and light of late summer in Michigan: the yellow grain in the fields, the yellow harvest moon, the varying blues of the sky at morning and sunset. These "ribbons that nature has spun" reminded him, too, of "the maid of the golden hair, and eyes that are brimming with blue."
Next Gayley chose a soft, wistful melody called "Pirates' Chorus" from The Enchantress, an opera by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe.
Students quickly embraced the song and began to sing it. Leaflets with the words were printed, and within a few years it was the university's recognized alma mater.
Gayley returned to Ann Arbor from time to time, and in 1925, near the end of a long life, he wrote: "It has always been a great joy to me, revisiting Ann Arbor, to hear the song still sung in fraternity houses, and on the campus in the twilight. I have heard it in mid-ocean, on the streets of Florence and Rome, and hither and yon as I have traveled about the world. A song written in the days of one's youth, if it by good luck expresses the emotion and enthusiasm of succeeding generations of young men and women, is a thousand times more worthwhile than many books of learning."
References
External links
- Song Lyrics for Yellow and Blue
- Sheet music for The Yellow and Blue
- The Birth of the "Yellow and Blue"
- Sheet music for "Pirates' Chorus" from The Enchantress with Variations by Anthony Reiff, Jr.
- Download a Public Domain copy of the University of Michigan Band's 1926 recording of "The Yellow And Blue".
- v
- t
- e
Teams | |
---|---|
Venues | |
Other |
Museums |
|
---|---|
Botanical |
- American National Election Studies
- Business Engagement Center
- Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems
- Environmental Research Institute
- Global Feminisms Project
- Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments
- Institute for Social Research
- Michigan Aeronautical Research Center
- Michigan Life Sciences Corridor
- Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute
- National Quality Research Center
- University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index
- Black Action Movement
- Compulsive Lyres
- The Detroit Partnership
- Eclipse Jazz
- Graduate Employees' Organization
- Inter-Cooperative Council
- "Let's Go Blue"
- Michigan Marching Band
- Michigan Ultras
- Phi Delta Theta House
- Men's Glee Club
- Naked Mile
- Order of Angell
- Pops Orchestra
- Social Venture Fund
- Society of Les Voyageurs
- Solar Car Team
- Students for a Democratic Society
- Theta Phi Alpha
- "The Victors"
- "Varsity"
- "The Yellow and Blue"
- Founded: 1817
- Students: 52,065 (2023)
- Endowment: $17.9 billion (2023)
![]() | This article about a university or college in Michigan is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e