George Whitefield Chadwick
George Whitefield Chadwick (November 13, 1854 – April 4, 1931) was an American composer. Along with John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell, he was a representative composer of what is called the Se ...
from about 1895 to 1904. Each of the four movements is inspired by a scene depiction, much like snapshots in an album, drawings, or vignettes. The style largely stems from Chadwick’s experience with the Duveneck Boys, a group of free-spirited artists led by
Frank Duveneck
Frank Duveneck (né Decker; October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919) was an American figure and portrait painter.
Early life
Duveneck was born in Covington, Kentucky, the son of German immigrant Bernhard Decker. Decker died in a cholera epidemic whe ...
.
Analysis
The piece consists of four movements:
# Jubilee
# Noël
# Hobgoblin
# A Vagrom Ballad
The composer's intentions are specified by bits of poetry opposite each title page.
For Sketch No. 1, "Jubilee",
''No cool gray tones for me!''
''Give me the warmest red and green,''
''A cornet and a tambourine,''
''To paint my Jubilee!''
''For when pale flutes and oboes play,''
''To sadness I become a prey;''
''Give me the violets and the May,''
''But no gray skies for me.''
For Sketch No. 2, "Noël",
''Through the soft, calm moonlight comes a sound;''
''A mother lulls her babe, and all around''
''The gentle snow lies glistening;''
''On such a night the Virgin Mother mild''
''In dreamless slumber wrapped the Holy Child,''
''While angel-hosts were listening.''
For Sketch No. 3. "Hobgoblin", words from Shakespeare,
''That shrewd and knavish sprite''
''Called Robin Goodfellow.''
For Sketch No. 4, "A Vagrom Ballad",
''A tale of tramps and railway ties,''
''Or old clay pipes and rum,''
''Of broken heads and blacken eyes''
''And the "thirty days" to come!''
The second movement was composed for the birth of Chadwick's son, whose name Noël is French for
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...
. The opening poem is reminiscent of the Christmas song ''
Silent Night
"Silent Night" (german: "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", links=no, italic=no) is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an ...
''. The English horn solo portrays a similar atmosphere as in the second movement of Dvořák’s 9th Symphony (1893), where they both have a pentatonic scale in D-flat. ''Noël'' evokes a feeling of serenity and homeyness.
The fourth movement was inspired by vagrants near a railway track in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is described as "A jaunty irreverence, a snapping of the fingers at Fate and the Universe, that we do not recognize in music of foreign composers..." It contains a distinctive bass clarinet solo and a somewhat haphazard organization with unexpected periods of silence, tempo changes, and slapstick cliffhangers. There is also a brief Impressionist and
Arabesque
The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...
interlude which showed his influence from the French style.
Recordings
Several recordings of the complete score have been released on compact disc:
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Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson (October 28, 1896 – February 26, 1981)''The New York Times'' – Obituaries. Harold C. Schonberg. February 28, 1981 p. 1011/ref> was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American class ...
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Neeme Järvi
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Early life
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Theodore Kuchar (born May 31, 1963) is an American and Ukrainian conductor of classical music and a violist.
Biography
Kuchar was born in 1963 in New York City.Naxos Records
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José Serebrier
José Serebrier (born 3 December 1938) is a Uruguayan conductor and composer. He is one of the most recorded conductors of his generation.
Early life
Serebrier was born in Montevideo to Russian and Polish parents of Jewish extraction. He fi ...
,
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
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