(George Whitfield Chadwick: born in Lowell, Mass., November 13, 1854; now living in Boston) DRAMATIC OVERTURE, "MELPOMENE"[22] Chadwick's three principal overtures, "Melpomene," "Adonais," and "Euterpe," belong to that somewhat anomalous class of modern works which occupy a place on the border-line between programme music and "absolute" music—music which, while constructed according to the classic rules of design rather than in conformity with a poetic or dramatic scheme, is yet devoted to the expression of some mood or idea more definite than that which one looks for in music that is admittedly "absolute." In the "Melpomene," "Adonais," and "Euterpe" overtures, the composer has given us no clews as to the particular significance of his music beyond those conveyed by their titles—which are, doubtless, in their case, sufficient to establish a receptive mood in the hearer. The "Melpomene," composed in 1887, was originally intended as a companion piece to his earlier and seldom-played "Thalia" overture. That was subtitled "Overture to an Imaginary Comedy," and the sub-title of the "Melpomene" was intended to be "Overture to an Imaginary Tragedy." In the published score, however, the sub-title was omitted, and only the name of the Tragic Muse[23] was retained as an indication of the emotional purport of the music. The overture, as has been said, bears no explanatory note or preface whatever. Of its emotional outlines an indication is given in this vivid exposition of the music by Mr. Rupert Hughes: "It opens with the solitary voice of the English horn.... The woful plaint of this voice, breathing above a low, sinister roll of the kettle-drum, establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets, the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends the slow introduction. The first subject is announced by the first violins against the full orchestra.... After a powerful climax and a beautiful subsidence, ... the second subject appears, ... with honeyed lyricism. Almost before one knows it he is in the midst of the elaboration [the development, or "working-out" section, of a composition in sonata form]. It is hard to say whether the composer's emotion or his counterpoint is given freer rein here, for the work is remarkable both for the display of every technical resource and for the irresistible tempest of its passion.... The cheerful consolation of the second subject provokes a cyclonic outburst of grief; there is a furious climax of thrilling flutes and violins over a mad blare of brass, the while the cymbals shiver beneath the blows of the kettle-drum-sticks. An abrupt silence prepares for a fierce, thunderous clamor from the kettle-drums and the great drum. This subsides to a single thud of a kettle-drum; there is another eloquent silence; the English horn returns to its first plaint; but grief has died of very exercise, and the work ends in a coda [conclusion passage] that ... leaves the hearer with a heart purged white and clean."
ELEGIAC OVERTURE, "ADONAIS" [24] The score of this overture, completed in 1899, bears the following inscription: "In memoriam Frank Fay Marshall, obiit July 26, 1897." Its emotional kinship with the great threnody of Shelley is indicated in the title and in the character of the music. It might fittingly bear as motto these incomparable lines from Shelley's poem, which voice in words the precise emotion which has seemed to shape the utterances of the musician: "Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within thy burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend:—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair.
"He will awake no more, oh, never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."
CONCERT OVERTURE, "EUTERPE" [25] It has been said authoritatively that this overture (composed in 1903) follows no definite programmatic plan; that the spirit which animates it is adequately suggested by the title. Euterpe, it will be recalled, was the fourth daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Her province among the Muses has been admirably stated by Thomas Heywood, that seventeenth-century Englishman of amazing literary fecundity and erudition. [26] "Euterpe," he wrote in 1624, "is called the goddess of pleasantness and jollities, said to be delighted in all sorts of pipes and wind instruments, and to be both their inventresse and guidress.... This is the consequence and coherence betwixt Clio[27] and Euterpe, according to Fulgentius: we first in Clio acquire sciences, and arts, and enterprises, and by them honour and glorie: that obtained, in Euterpe we find pleasure and delectations in all such things as we sought and attained.... For Euterpe imports to us nothing else but the joy and pleasure which we conceive in following the Muses and truly apprehending the mysteries of discipline and service."
SYMPHONIC POEM, "CLEOPATRA" [28] The narrative of Plutarch, rather than the play of Shakespeare, has served as the dramatic and poetic basis of this musical embodiment of the tragic history of Antony and Cleopatra. The composer has gone for his basic material to Plutarch's Life of Antony, from which, according to an authorized exposition, "those situations having the most direct reference to Cleopatra have been chosen for musical suggestion, although the action of the tragedy is not literally followed." Those phases of the tale selected by the composer for particular delineation appear to relate—in the order of their place in the score—to the voyage of Cleopatra up the River Cydnus in her barge (that barge which, "like a burnished throne, burnt on the water"); the martial approach of Antony; the passion of the lovers; Antony's melancholy end, and the burial of the pair in one grave. The music (it was composed in 1904) opens with a passage suggestive of Cleopatra's voyage upon the Cydnus—a tonal paraphrase of Shakespeare's picture of that wonderful floating pageant: the barge whose poop "was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes." According to an exposition prepared with the sanction of the composer, the music, after this passage, proceeds as follows in relation to the progress of the tragedy: "... A climax for the whole orchestra is succeeded by an allegro agitato depicting the approach of Antony and his army. A bold military theme is worked up to a powerful climax, but soon dies away in soft harmonies for the wind instruments and horns. The Cleopatra theme then begins, first with a sensuous melody for the violoncello, repeated by the violins and afterwards by the whole orchestra. "Strange harmonies are heard in the muted strings. The English horn and clarinet sing short, passionate phrases, to which the soft trombones later on add a sound of foreboding. But suddenly the Cleopatra theme appears again, now transformed to a vigorous allegro, and Antony departs to meet defeat and death. "The Antony theme is now fully worked out, mostly in minor keys and sometimes in conjunction with the Cleopatra motive. It ends with a terrific climax.... A long diminuendo, ending with a melancholy phrase for the viola, suggests Antony's final passing, and Cleopatra's lamentation follows. "In this part much of the previous love music is repeated, and some of it is entirely changed in expression as well as in rhythm and instrumentation. At last it dies away in mysterious harmonies. "The work closes with an imposing passage in which the burial of Antony and Cleopatra in the same grave is suggested by the two themes now heard for the first time simultaneously. For this, Shakespeare's line is, perhaps, not inappropriate: "She shall be buried by her Antony;
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous ..."
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