George Whitefield Chadwick
(American; 1854-1931)

Symphonic Sketches No. 1, "Jubilee"
I. Jubilee
II. Noël
III. Hobgoblin
IV. A Varom Ballad

Composed 1904; Duration 6 minutes

From the prosperity of America’s Industrial Revolution, especially in the Northeast, emerged a burgeoning generation of composers who sought to establish an infrastructure for American music in the closing years of the nineteenth century. One such figure from this so-called “Second New England School” was George Chadwick. A respected Boston staple, by the first years of the twentieth century, he was the Director of the New England Conservatory, and his fingerprints were on countless musical initiatives that emerged from the period, including associations and festivals.

His Symphonic Sketches were composed from about 1895 to 1904, and demonstrate Chadwick to be a skilled orchestrator and musical storyteller. The work is nearly a symphony, but without the title, it avoids the more serious trappings of the genre and can instead investigate his lighthearted side. Each movement is accompanied by a poem that illuminates a depicted scene, as with the opening “Jubilee,” which is parade-like in its opening. The raucous percussion subsides, revealing pastoral melodies.

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.

The second movement was composed upon the birth of his and his wife Ida May’s second son, Noël, in 1894. Opening on an extensive English horn solo, a solitary pentatonic melody conveys the domestic tranquility and Christmastime peacefulness:

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.

The third movement acts as the work’s scherzo. Flitting along with mischievous frivolity, Chadwick borrowed his brief description from Shakespeare:

That shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow.

With a sense of intentional disorganization, abrupt shifts in tempo and dynamics (and the odd bass clarinet cadenza) narratively portray the chaotic drama of vagabonds loitering near a railway track in Springfield:

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!

Chaz Stuart, 2026