George Whitefield Chadwick: The Life and Music of the Pride of New England

Preface

PrefaCe Professor Douglass Seaton’s nineteenth-century music seminar at The Florida State University encouraged my discovery of many composers and scores. But of everything I listened to that semester, I was most taken by the compositions of a little known, to me at least, American composer named George Whitefield Chadwick. I “discovered,” and then wrote a term paper on, his irresistible Second Symphony. It is melodic, inventive, and beautifully crafted. Since that time I have not only become familiar with much of his music, which a decade ago enjoyed a brief recording renaissance, but I also got to know aspects of his life and career that most musicologists have not been so fortunate to explore. Much of what I learned was the result of several memorable summers spent in the company of Chadwick’s grandson, Theodore (Ted) Chadwick Jr. and his wife,Elsie,in the small Massachusetts village of Duxbury.During those visits,in the 1990s, Ted Chadwick kindly gave me permission to root through a trunk of family belongings that had lain uninspected in an upstairs room for years. The contents were George Chadwick’s personal documents. Ted and I talked late into the night about “Grandpa,” his life, his music (of which Ted himself knew little) and his large reputation in family lore. We also pored over Chadwick’s voluminous writings, now rescued from the trunk and stacked lovingly on the dining-room table. Ted read them eagerly and with a passion that led me to conclude that he had never before plumbed the trunk. Now and then he would even assume the elder Chadwick’s voice and personality.After Ted’s death these materials,along with others,were made a priceless gift to New England Conservatory by Chadwick’s family and heirs.I cannot believe that George would have wished them to end up anywhere else. The recent availability of this treasure trove enables the study of facets of Chadwick’s life and work that were previously unknowable. These materials— memoirs, diaries, photographs, letters, and compositional sketchbooks— constitute one of the richest and most significant collections of primary sources that exists for an American composer of art music before the Great Depression. “They were begun as private soliloquies on the [Boston] Symphony concerts and other musical events at which I ‘assisted’ with no thought of any further continuation,” Chadwick reflected on the origins of his efforts. “But writing is xii | Preface an industry which becomes a vice if encouraged, and the family was so much interested in these private observations that for their sake I started over at the beginning.” Over time Chadwick’s writings morphed from an insider’s view of music as it was generally practiced in Boston, to a Chadwick family history, and finally to an intimate confessional. Chadwick’s “vice” has made possible this examination and interpretation of his life, and I draw heavily on his own words to reach my conclusions. What follows is not a strictly chronological account of Chadwick’s life, although I have made it roughly so. Because Chadwick was prolific, and because at any given time he had many projects on his plate, I have sometimes elected to separate his oeuvre by genre. I have similarly provided separate consideration of aspects of his personal life and his professional career in order to give context and deeper meaning to the issues under discussion. I have opted against the use of music examples in this book in an effort to make it more accessible for readers who are not musicians, music students, or musicologists. However, I have not hesitated to analyze important musical passages closely when discussion of the music itself seemed necessary. Generally speaking, I have offered more detailed harmonic and structural analysis for Chadwick’s larger instrumental compositions, but I have approached this task with a minimum of music-theoretical jargon.When discussing form,I have used the language provided by Jan LaRue in his invaluable Guidelines for Style Analysis , 2nd edition (Harmonie Park Press, 1992), which may be summarized as follows : O refers to introduction/opening material; P refers to the theme associated with the principal key; S refers to the theme associated with the secondary key; N refers to a new theme; T (or t) refers to transitional material; and K (or k) refers to closing areas. (Lowercase letters refer to non-melodic material.) Traditional analytical language (exposition-development-recapitulation) is also used.Tables and appendices further illuminate aspects of Chadwick’s...