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Frederick Converse, American Sketches, Song of the Sea, and Festival of Pan. BBC Concert Orchestra, Keith Lockhart, conductor. Dutton Epoch CDLX 7278, 2011./George W. Chadwick, Adonais, Cleopatra, A Pastoral Prelude, and Sinfonietta in D Major. BBC Concert Orchestra, Keith Lockhart, conductor. Dutton Epoch CDLX 7293, 2012.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Abstract

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Type
Recording Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2015 

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References

1 Leonard Bernstein, “Young People's Concert: What is American Music?” television script, original airdate 1 February 1958, http://www.leonardbernstein.com/ypc_script_what_is_american_music.htm. In what was only the second telecast in the series, Bernstein went on to say that “we had a very fine composer named George W. Chadwick, who wrote expert music, and also deeply felt music, but you could almost not tell it apart from the music of Brahms, Wagner, or other Europeans.”

2 Copland, Aaron, Music and Imagination (New York: Mentor Books, 1952), 107Google Scholar. In Copland's defense, he did later admit to a certain admiration for Chadwick, after examining some of his works in the Harvard Library: “I was quite surprised by how smoothly written his scores were. The technique was really first class. It wasn't very original, but it was certainly good music of its time. I don't think it would hurt us occasionally to hear some piece from that period. Who knows, there may be some dark masterpiece, rotting away, waiting to be rediscovered!” See “Conversation with Edward T. Cone (1967),” in Aaron Copland: A Reader, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Routledge, 2004), 351.

3 Thomson, Virgil, American Music Since 1910 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 2Google Scholar.

4 Järvi recorded Chadwick's Second and Third Symphonies, the Symphonic Sketches, and several programmatic pieces. Serebrier's Chadwick recordings also include the Symphonic Sketches, in addition to the Suite Symphonique and other programmatic works. Kuchar's disc couples the Second Symphony with the Symphonic Sketches. Schermerhorn's disc rounds out the picture of Chadwick's orchestral output, focusing on his ancient Greece–inspired concert overtures and symphonic poems. Note that with the lone exception of the First Symphony, all of Chadwick's numbered symphonies and multi-movement, symphony-like compositions are now currently available on compact disc. Falletta's Converse album includes three programmatic orchestral scores: Endymion's Narrative, The Mystic Trumpeter, and Flivver Ten Million. (This summary ignores the few “classic” recordings from the LP era.)

5 Chadwick studied composition with Salomon Jadassohn and Carl Reinecke in Leipzig and with Josef Rheinberger in Munich from 1877–79. Converse first trained under John Knowles Paine at Harvard and later Chadwick himself at the New England Conservatory before also travelling to Munich for Rheinberger's tutelage from 1897–99.

6 Remarking upon the fact that Adonais remained unpublished, Chadwick explained in February 1900: “Lest some fool scribe should jump at the conclusion after I am dead when it will be played that I did not think it was near enough my own standard to be worth publishing, I will put on record my opinion, formed after hearing several performances and many rehearsals, that it is as good as I have ever been able to do and is in some respects the best of my works.” Quoted in Faucett, Bill F., George Whitefield Chadwick: The Life and Music of the Pride of New England (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012), 200Google Scholar.

7 R.G.G., writing for the Boston Evening Transcript, 3 December 1901; quoted in Yellin, Victor Fell, Chadwick: Yankee Composer (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), 125Google Scholar.

8 Faucett, Chadwick, 216.

9 Ruth Severance, “The Life and Work of Frederick Shepherd Converse” (MA thesis, Boston University, 1932), 18.

10 With this world-premiere recording, one can now easily trace the development of Converse's compositional style from his much earlier Whitman-based symphonic poem The Mystic Trumpeter (1904), as recorded by Falletta, to Song of the Sea. The Mystic Trumpeter is likewise a close musical parallel to the shape and content of Whitman's eponymous poem.

11 Quoted in Garofalo, Robert J., Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871–1940): His Life and Music (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994), 79Google Scholar.

12 Severance, “Life and Work,” 110. Severance's commentary on American Sketches derives from conversations with the composer, as the score had not yet been performed.

13 Garofalo, Converse, 80.