A march called The Emblem Club

The Dream theatre advertised a march called “The Emblem Club” in its Christmas music program.

The Dream theatre advertised “Quo Vadis” and Special Music for the evenings of 25 and 26 December 1913, with matinees on Christmas Day and the Friday, at twenty-five and fifteen cents. Each evening carried an orchestra programme and a specialty — a cornet solo and a song on the first night, a violin solo by Mrs. E. V. Ward on the second.

The march named for the club is the third number on the second evening, and the interesting part is its company. Three of that evening’s seven orchestra numbers carry the same credit, “Gup”, and the name is on the December 25 list as well. Whoever he was, he had written or arranged a good part of the theatre’s Christmas music, and a march named for the Emblem Club was one piece of a run rather than a commission.

The programme abbreviates the composer to “Gup” and this archive keeps it: an expansion is an inference. A Bend band programme of June 1916 prints four pieces by the same hand — marches named for the Pilot Butte Inn, the Emblem Club and Bend Park, and a waltz — and gives the name in full as O. M. Guptil, with one L. Other accounts spell it Guptill with two. The archive records both and resolves neither.