New England Conservatory of Music - Neume Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 10 text:

TO GEORGE WHITEFIELD CHADWICK, Dean of living American composers and our Director, we dedicate this book. Few of those who signify in the musical life of America but have felt the influence of this eminent teacher and composer. A gracious personality, a man of high ideals, a friend to youth, he commands our admiration, respect and affection. Autumn winds .twirl the dry leares orer fields turninq brown. The foliage it ablaze with scarlets, russets an I yellow against the erergreen. The fiel Is hare yieldel their harvests, the wine is drawn. In loors, by the glowing fireplace, books arc rea l, muxir is hear ! an I reminis: ences are share! in the leisure and comfort earned by toil. From a smouldering West the sun suffuses the landscape with a genial warmth. It it autumn, the golden season. Thus does a rich personality, in the fullness of its years, shed warmth on the lives around it. In its golden season, such an honore I life reaps the harvest of m el to we I frien ' ships; it delights in eager youth who rejoice in its achievements and who seek to share its ripened wisdom. It gives freely the fruits from a life of Creative effort, and in giring is blessed by those to whom such gifts hare brought inspiration and joy. Therefore I summon age To grant youth ' s heritage. — Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra

Page 9 text:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN He towers above US in bronze, as in the flesh he towered anions his contemporaries. His sculptured face declares intellect, nobility, a powerful determination, and, withal, human tenderness. The massive head seems to shake defiance at all that is ignoble and trivial of today, as during his lifetime it defied Fate itself.

Page 11 text:

GEORGE WHITEFIELD ( HAD WICK, A.M., LL.D. On May 6, 1880, Mr. Chadwick made his bow in Boston as composer and con- ductor when he led the Handel and Haydn Society in the performance of his overture to Rip Van Winkle . This work, first performed here by the Harvard Musical Association on December 11, 1879, had made a profound impression where heard in European music centers. Mr. Chadwick was then twenty-five and, as he says, quite unknown. To his debut in Boston he looks back in happy retrospection, and we join with him in observing the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of an illustrious career as composer, conductor and teacher.