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ePiloGUe Chadwick’s Death & Legacy 1931 With him a whole epoch in American music culminated. —Olin Downes, New York Times (1931) His unswerving creed was that of beauty in expression. —Henry Hadley, Musical Courier (1937) “Weep for Adonis” Although gout had been a painful nemesis for decades, Chadwick’s heart condition was more worrisome. In late 1930 and into the first months of 1931, problems that had been of concern became severe. “Paderewski dinner and concert,” he wrote in his diary on December 27, 1930, “Had a heart attack and could not go.” January 15, 1931: “Went to bso rehearsal. Hadley came to lunch. Beastly cold. Very bad for heart.” More comments, each made briefly, sometimes clinically, followed: “Heart attack in the night” (March 5, 1931); later that month, “Bad heart in a.m.” (March 31, 1931). After months of scares and struggle, Chadwick’s heart finally failed him at his home on 360 Marlborough Street on April 4, 1931.1 We learn several intimate details about Chadwick’s death from Dr. Hamilton C. MacDougall, who penned an affectionate remembrance of him for publication in the organists’ periodical The Diapason. (MacDougall had studied counterpoint with Chadwick at the turn of the century, but there is no evidence that they remained in close contact.) As they often did, the Chadwicks were entertaining friends at their home on Saturday evening. “About 10 [p.m.] he excused himself to go to bed,” MacDougall reported. “Mrs. Chadwick, hearing a noise, went to the room where he had fallen and tried to help him up, but he died in her arms.”2 His funeral service, swiftly arranged and conducted on April 7, was led by Rev. Arthur Lee Kinsolving and held at Boston’s Trinity Church. Chadwick’s attendants and pallbearers included old friends and colleagues: Wallace Goodrich , Ralph Flanders, Fred Converse, Henry Hadley, Edward Burlingame Hill, and Charles Martin Loeffler, among others. He was buried at the iconic Mount Auburn Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, just outside of Boston. Notice of Chadwick’s death in the Boston press was surprisingly cursory. A short,unsigned obituary appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript on April 6; 340 | ge o rge whit e f ie ld c ha dwic k a funeral announcement followed the next day.The Boston Post ran a brief pageone article; the Boston Herald tucked its short post on page eight. The event stimulated disappointingly few memorial performances. Henry Hadley and his Manhattan Symphony honored Chadwick with a performance of Wagner’s Siegfried ’s Funeral Music. It was pronounced “deeply moving.”3 Frederick Stock led his Chicago Symphony Orchestra in two performances of Melpomene.“This aristocratic, dignified music was reverently presented,” wrote one auditor.4 In a more celebratory vein, the National Orchestral Association under conductor Leon Barzin performed “Jubilee.”5 Matters were more controversial in New York. In “Mephisto Musings,” an editorialcolumninthepopularperiodicalMusicalAmerica,thewriterexpressed surprise that Chadwick’s death did not merit “official notice” by the New York Philharmonic.Although Chadwick was a New Englander,he was,the columnist asserted, of more than just regional importance—he was an American treasure. “Toscanini may not have wanted to do this [tribute] without a rehearsal, which I can understand,” Mephisto mused, “but could he not have given the baton to [assistant conductor] Hans Lange?”6 In Boston, Goodrich led a memorial concert at nec, portions of which were broadcast on the radio.It featured Adonais and Eccejamnoctis,along with works by Horatio Parker and others. Jordan Hall, we are told, was crowded.7 Perhaps emblematic of how far Chadwick’s star had fallen at the bso, the orchestra performed “Noël” in the composer’s honor on a Tuesday matinee program on April 21. It was given without fanfare, although a critic on hand thought Koussevitzky and the orchestra played it “very expressively, con amore.”8 Nevertheless ,the tribute seemed a rather curt farewell to the towering composer who had dominated music in Boston since the 1880s. “Mendelssohn Understood the Business”: Chadwick’s Aesthetics, Ideals, and Legacy Chadwick’s legend had dissipated enormously by the time he died. He had longbeenconsidered“oldhat,”hethought,andin1929,followingaperformance of his Fifth String Quartet by the New York Quartet, he remarked that the 1898 work was “a relic of the Ice Age.”9 In Chadwick’s estimation, his music, tuneful and exultant, did not speak to musicians of a younger generation. Moreover, orchestra performances of his works became more infrequent, and his once exalted position at the...

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