George Whitefield Chadwick

Investigates the American composer's six symphonic works, looking at their historical background with respect to contemporary trends in American compositions and comparing them to aesthetic models in European symphonic tradition. Offers detailed musical analysis of the structural and stylistic tendencies in the works, and reviews the critical reception of his symphonic oeuvre. Includes musical examples, works and performance lists, and a discography. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The definitive biography of a major American composer and musical leader

George Whitefield Chadwick was one of the most prolific composers that the United States ever produced. During a career that spanned over 50 years, he was considered the Dean of American Composers from the 1880s until after World War I. He composed in nearly every genre, including opera/stage works (seven), orchestral music (17 major works), songs (over 100), and dozens of choral and chamber works. Chadwick benefited from numerous performances of his music—particularly by the Boston Symphony Orchestra—and many of his works were published during his lifetime. He was also considered one of the foremost teachers of his era. He began teaching composition at the New England Conservatory of Music, and became its Dean in 1897, a post he held for more than 30 years. Chadwick and his music are currently enjoying a revival.

George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931), a Massachusetts native identified with the so-called second “New England School” of composers, is among the most important and creative American composers in the generation that bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Trained in part in Germany, he spent much of his working life educating other musicians at the New England Conservatory of Music, which he led from 1897 until his death. Chadwick fashioned a compelling individual musical voice rooted in a Euro-American musical idiom; his orchestral and chamber music was performed with some frequency in his own day and has been revived in ours. His opera The Padrone, set to a libretto by David K. Stevens (based on an idea from Chadwick himself), was composed in 1912; it was strongly influenced by the “verismo” operas of the time (such as Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s Tosca), which attempted to bring to opera the naturalism of such late nineteenth-century writers as Zola and Ibsen. The Padrone is set in an American city (presumably the North End of Boston) in the “present.” The story, a tragic tale in two acts with an orchestral interlude, revolves around a ruthless member of the Italian community (“the padrone”) and his exploitation of more recently arrived immigrants. Chadwick composed The Padrone for submission to the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, but the opera was rejected, probably because of its gritty realism, and was never staged during Chadwick’s lifetime. (The Padrone exists only in manuscript form and has never been published; its only public performance so far took place in 1997.) In contrast to American operas of its generation that dramatize myths and legends from the ancient past, The Padrone brings a modern story to the stage, set to music of dramatic power and superb craftsmanship.

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George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931), composer, organist, conductor, and director of the New England Conservatory in Boston, was one of America's most prolific musical authority in the later 19th and early 20th century. Like with many composers of his generation, his music, his biography, and his influential role in cultural life became forgotten in the crosscurrents of modernity. However, Chadwick has been recently rediscovered, and his nearly forgotten music subsequently has provoked new and increasing interest. Hitherto unknown biographical and musical findings make it now possible to value Chadwick's importance in a new way. His biography, uniquely documented by personal papers of all kinds, simultaneously depicts the career of a 19th century American composer and the contemporary musical and social networks of his surrounding. This book was written with the intention of illuminating Chadwick's musical development, his role models, musical ideals and aesthetics. However, in reviewing the source material it was impossible not to stumble in the sources upon the very personal unburdening of a full-blooded musician, who throughout his life was confronted with many obstacles, but never stopped struggling to be recognized as a composer of good music.

Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries on traditions, famous pieces, persons, places, technical terms, and institutions of Romantic music.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”