Rip van Winkle, Concert overture Score - George Whitefield Chadwick
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1774
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George Whitefield Chadwick was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1854 and he studied for several years at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In 1877 he went to the Leipzig Conservatoire and there studied with Jadassohn and Reinecke, later to be the Conservatoire’s director. He wrote two string quartets and his first orchestral work, the overture Rip Van Winkle, which was successfully performed in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 20 June 1879. The overture was well reviewed in the German press and performed twice in Boston after his return there in 1880 by the Handel and Haydn Society.
Chadwick’s later career culminated in his appointment as Director of the New England Conservatory of Music in 1897, a position which he held until his death in 1931. His influence as a teacher and administrator were considerable, and his music was regarded as representing the best of American music of its time. He composed many choral works and songs, and six stage works of various kinds were performed during his lifetime. His verismo opera Il Padrone was not performed until 1995.
He followed the success of Rip Van Winkle with a series of symphonic poems, including Thalia (1883), The Miller’s Daughter (1884), Melpomene (1887), Adonais (1900), Cleopatra (1905), Aphrodite (1912), Tam O’Shanter (1915) and Angel of Death (1917).
Rip Van Winkle is based on a short story by Washington Irving published in 1819. It tells of a villager of Dutch descent living in the Catskill mountains who is nagged by his wife since he likes to be idle and avoid hard work. He wanders into the mountains and falls in with a ghostly group of men whose moonshine he gladly drinks.
He falls asleep and awakes to find his dog gone and his beard a foot long. Back in the village his wife has died and his friends have disappeared. He has been gone for over twenty years, but he is taken in by his daughter, now grown up, and he learns that the old colony is now the United States of America.
In the 1920s Chadwick wrote a preface for a revised version of the score in which he said “It is in no sense programme music”. But he then went on to explain: “The calm, peaceful introduction may be like the pleasant valley where Rip Van Winkle lived. The first theme in the fast tempo may suggest the jolly good-for-nothing which Rip really was. But he was fond of his little daughter, and so the second theme is sweeter.
And when he wandered off into the mountains the little old men made him drink and play “Kegel” with them. Perhaps you hear the knocking of the ninepins and the rolling of the distant thunder. Then Rip goes to sleep and does not wake up for twenty years. There is a long pause in the music to indicate the passage of time.
Then Rip wakes up and goes back to his home where he finds everything changed. All the rest of the overture means the general rejoicing at Rip Van Winkle’s return.”
This summary reveals the main features of the story which Chadwick has chosen to illustrate. In his revised version he introduced a xylophone to suggest the sound of ninepins. It is a highly accomplished composition from a young man at the start of his career.
Hugh Macdonald, 2016
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Componist(en):
Uitgever('s):
Uitgavenummer:
1774
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ISBN:
Volgnummer:
934181
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