Chadwick's Melpomene and the Anxiety of Inßuence

By E. Douglas Bomberger

George Whitefield Chadwick's dramatic overture Melpomene, named for the Greek muse of tragedy, was given its first performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on December 24, 1887. The audience that chose to spend Christmas Eve at the concert heard a work that would soon become a staple of the nineteenth-century American orchestral repertoire, as it was played repeatedly in Boston, New York, Chicago, and various European cities. It was this work more than any other that Chadwick believed had entered the standard orchestral repertoire, and upon receiving a congratulatory note on yet another performance in 1908, he wrote in his diary, "Why always 'Melpomene?'"