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Getting Started in Boston 1880–1882 Success in composition it seems to me is so uncertain; the way is so long; there are so many and such insurmountable difficulties in the way, that it is not strange many are frightened from even attempting the first steps, to say nothing of persevering until a reasonable amount of success is obtained. —George E. Whiting, “An American School of Composition” (1884) First Jobs Chadwick re-entered Boston’s musical world with a perspective that was vastly different from the one he possessed a few short years ago. Now a professional with an enviable German conservatory imprimatur—although not a diploma—he would spend the next several years busying himself with numerous conducting and performing jobs. Importantly, he would also establish his own teaching studio. An advertisement placed in Dwight’s Journal of Music lists Chadwick’s profession as “conductor and solo organist,” and offers his services for piano and composition lessons, as well.1 Chadwick devoted much of his youthful career to organ playing,but he disdained serious practicing from his earliest days and practically stopped playing altogether once his career as a teacher and composer advanced, with one or two notable exceptions. He never harbored the desire to be a performing musician. Nevertheless, on those occasions when Chadwick performed he was typically regarded as technically competent. Jadassohn thought that he had little natural ability for the keyboard, but emphasized that when he did play it was with fine musicianship, even if “proper piano technique” was absent.2 Chadwick never held any of the most coveted church directorships in Boston, such as the Episcopal Trinity Church or the Anglican/Unitarian King’s Chapel, two plum posts. But his early career as a church musician was not unimportant (see table 4.1). In Malden Chadwick often practiced on the new organ at the town’s Methodist church,and even gave a few lessons.He also briefly substituted at Boston’s Grace Episcopal Church,where he wrote his diminutive Te Deum,before securing the full-time organ post at St. John’s Church in Roxbury. St. John’s had “a miserable little organ, a poor church, a mixed, very mixed choir,” and paid him five hundred dollars a year for two services per week.“But it was a start and that was all I asked for.”3 4 74 | ge orge whitefield chadwick By May 1881, Chadwick had taken the presumably more lucrative, or at least less time-consuming, position as “Musical Director” of Boston’s Clarendon Street Baptist Church,having left St.John’s just after Easter.One journalist who reported on Chadwick’s new position and discussed several of his compositions predicted for him “a brilliant career, if his present successes do not overcome him. From what we know of him, we have no fears in that direction, and shall watch his progress with much interest.”4 Chadwick was enticed to Clarendon Street Baptist Church by its organ, the finest he had played since leaving Europe . It helped, too, that the choir included six seasoned performers, four men and two women, who gave more polished performances than were possible at Grace Episcopal Church. When Chadwick left Clarendon Street Baptist Church (“the minister desired to make the music more evangelistic in character”5 ) in April 1882, he took the position of organist at Boston’s now-historic Park Street Church, perhaps the most important, or at least the most visible, church post Chadwick would ever occupy. (It is worth mentioning that earlier in the church’s history its music director was none other than Nathaniel D. Gould.6 ) Chadwick was hired as organist for a small salary plus the use of a residential room.7 It seems possible that he had not intended to stay at Park Street Church for very long, or was hired only for a temporary engagement, for the church records of May 25, 1883, state that “The organist is not yet engaged. Mr. Chadwick is occupying the position at present at the rate of $300 per annum.”8 It is also possible that Chadwick did not wish to sign a contract that would leave him unable to take another position, although the room that came with the job provided a strong incentive to keep table 4.1. Chadwick’s Church Positions Years Church ca. 1875 First Church of Boston; Eliot Church, Newton; Lawrence Street Church, Lawrence (substituting variously for S. A. Ellis and E. Thayer) 1880 Grace...

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