Page 21 - Phil 2024-2025 opening night digital program

residents learned of the British ceasefire which ended the American Revolution, and
Irving’s mother named him after George Washington, whom he met at age six.

Chadwick followed the youthful 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). This story-based music was widely admired in the early twentieth century, as
Chadwick championed European elegance and romanticism. He composed string
quartets, choral works, songs, and operas; among his students at NEC were the
American composers Florence Price, William Grant Still, Horatio Parker (teacher of
Charles Ives at Yale), and Henry Hadley (founding conductor of the San Francisco
Symphony).

George Whitefield Chadwick was a native of Lowell, Massachusetts and alumnus of the
New England Conservatory and the Leipzig (Germany) Conservatory. After traveling
around Europe, including a stop in Paris (forty-five years before Gershwin’s visit), he
served as the Director of NEC (1897-1931) and was a founding member of the Music
Teacher’s National Association (now serving almost 20,000 members and sponsoring
most All-State conventions).
As a young composer, Chadwick had a brilliant melodic imagination. He was influenced
by the German romantics, including Franz Liszt, who championed story-based forms
such as the symphonic poem. He had a superb gift for orchestration and was an
elder colleague of Richard Strauss, who would go on to extend the overture form
into substantial tone poems for large orchestra (such as Don Quixote and Also Sprach
Zarathustra).

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Tango: Oblivion Astor Piazzolla
(1921–1992)
Version for orchestra by
Eduardo Marturet (b. 1953)

Oblivion is one of Piazzolla’s most beloved melodies, a sultry, melancholic milonga
(considered a precursor of the tango) which premiered in 1982. Composed at peak of
his career, just a year after he performed in New York’s Madison Square Garden, it is
considered one of his more conservative late works, with less jazz influence and more
sensual syncopation. A sung version was featured in the 1984 Italian film Enrico IV
[Henry IV, the Mad King] directed by Marco Bellocchio. The lead character is an actor-
historian who suffers a fall during an historical pageant. Upon regaining consciousness,
he assumes the identity of his character, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV.
Oblivion’s milonga features a haunting, undulating melody, passed between several
soloists; the basic step of this dance is rhythmic walking, here elaborated into grandiose
arpeggios. The tango’s original sung text begins, “Heavy, suddenly they seem heavy:
the linen and velvets of your bed when our love passes to oblivion. Heavy, suddenly they

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