George Whitefield Chadwick was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on
November 13, 1854. Most of his music study took place in Germany. When
he was being graduated from the Leipzig Conservatory in 1879, his
overture _Rip Van Winkle_ received its première performance. He then
studied organ and composition with Rheinberger in Munich. After
returning to the United States in 1880, he became a teacher of harmony
and composition at the New England Conservatory, rising to the post of
director in 1897. He was also active for several years as director of
the Worcester Music Festival. He died in Boston on April 4, 1931.
Chadwick was a prolific composer of symphonies, concertos, and various
other orchestral and choral works. He never freed himself from the
influence of German Romanticism, with which he had been infected during
his student days. He wrote with a sure craftsmanship, usually filling
his classical structures with winning melodies and often lush harmonies
and orchestration.
Two compositions for orchestra are of particular popular appeal:
_Jubilee_ and _Noël_. Both are movements from the _Symphonic Sketches_
(1895) which received its world première in Boston in 1908. (The other
two movements, the third and fourth, are “Hobgoblin” and “A Vagrom
Ballad.”) _Jubilee_ is a vigorous tonal picture of a carnival. A
spirited melody is loudly presented by the full orchestra and is
elaborated upon. A second virile subject is then presented by bass
clarinet, bassoons, violas and cellos. Following a lively return of the
opening carnival theme, the woodwind and horns appear with a lyrical
subject. The music then gains in vitality until it comes to a rousing
conclusion with a coda built from the carnival motive.
_Noël_ has been described as “a little Christmas song.” It is a haunting
orchestral nocturne in which a serene Yuletide melody is offered by the
English horn.