In recent years, the works of George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) have attracted significant attention from scholars and performers. His orchestral works, particularly the ebullient ‘Jubilee’ from Symphonic Sketches (1895), are held up as models of American style. His string quartets have been recorded by the Portland Quartet, and carefully edited by Marianne Betz for the Recent Researches in American Music series. His verismo opera The Padrone (1912), unperformed in his lifetime, was staged in the 1990s and is currently in preparation for publication in the Music of the United States of America (MUSA) series. A new biography by Bill F. Faucett examines recently uncovered biographical materials and sheds new light on Chadwick's engaging personality.Footnote ¹ This CD of solo songs performed by tenor Glenn Siebert and pianist Peter Kairoff fills another lacuna in our understanding of Chadwick's oeuvre by introducing 25 songs, most of which have not been recorded previously.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a flowering of American song composition. Stephen Foster's masterful songs had captivated audiences and parlour singers since their publication in the antebellum era. During the last three decades of the century, American publishers flooded the market with a vast array of songs in every genre, from coon songs to sentimental parlour songs to art songs in the European tradition. At the latter end of the spectrum, the most successful composers were Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) and Amy Beach (1867–1944). MacDowell's songs – though not the most important part of his repertoire – demonstrate a range of textures, subject matter and melodic style that earned him pride of place among the New England composers of his generation. Beach's melodic gifts and spontaneity allowed her to create a body of songs that have maintained their appeal in subsequent generations. Pianists themselves, both composers showed the sensitivity in accompaniments crucial to art song composition. Moreover, they each had an ear for high-quality poetry, and MacDowell was an imaginative poet in his own right.

Chadwick wrote well over 100 songs in a variety of genres spanning his early career in the 1880s to his maturity in the 1910s. As Victor Yellin frankly admitted, however, ‘perhaps because of the nature of the genre itself, they lack the profile, the conviction, the character associated with the composer's unique American style in his orchestral and stage works’.Footnote ² The 25 songs on this CD support this judgement while also providing a broad overview of the stylistic range of his solo songs.

At the heart of the problem lie the texts. The composer favoured poetry by his Boston friends and acquaintances, which often reflects the tastes prevalent in the era. For example, A Flower Cycle (1892) consists of 10 songs on poems by his friend Arlo Bates. Ranging from sentimental to maudlin, the poems depict flowers anthropomorphically, attributing thoughts and feelings to each flower along with some ingenious origin stories for their colours. The texts are densely packed with images and ideas, making it difficult to grasp the nuances of meaning at first listen. Kairoff's liner notes point out that the set is more like a ‘lyrical bouquet’ than a song cycle, as it lacks a continuous narrative.

‘Allah’ (1887), to a text by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was among his more popular songs, evincing the perfumed aroma of the Orient with one of the simplest and most direct lyrics on this recording. Fashionable Bostonians decorated their homes with Asian objets d'art, and Chadwick sets this evocation of Islam with the gapped scales and raised fourth-degree inflections that were often used as exotic markers in the period. Another song with exotic text and musical gestures is ‘The Daughter of Mendoza’ (1914), to a text by Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar (1798–1859), a poet who served as the second president of the Republic of Texas.

In contrast to the precious sentiments of A Flower Cycle and the exoticism of ‘Allah’ and ‘The Daughter of Mendoza’ are the Four Irish Songs of 1910. These comical texts play on Irish stereotypes that were prevalent in Boston and stipulate the deployment of a heavy brogue. The dialect and inside jokes, however, make the meanings difficult to grasp, especially with Chadwick's propensity for thick accompaniments.

The piano parts are in general quite dense. Nearly every one of the flower songs has an accompaniment that is more active than the voice part, and this texture often distracts from the principal melody. The accumulated sound lends itself well to support of climactic high notes, as in ‘The Waterlily’ or ‘The Jasmine’, but too often it just sounds busy. Pianist Kairoff gamely tries to lighten the texture through judicious changes in balance and voicing, but his efforts are often a losing battle in the face of the composer's dense textures. An exception is found in the opening of ‘The Trilliums’, where Chadwick uses the piano effectively to evoke the robin's call before settling into constant triplets for the rest of the song.

Chadwick's melodies are not of the catchy type for which he was criticized early in his career by William F. Apthorp. Curiously, he eschews the tuneful, repetitive melodies that lend interest to his orchestral works in favour of long lines of rhythmic and harmonic complexity. He also favours wide tessituras, ascending scales and dramatic climaxes more suited to operatic singers than to amateur parlour singers, which may have limited the songs’ marketability. Tenor Siebert's vocal strengths lie in the middle of his range, and thus the demands of Chadwick's songs put added strain on his voice. He clearly has a love for the repertoire, however, as he brings depth of feeling to the romantic melodies.

The shortcomings of Chadwick's songs are illustrated by a comparison of A Flower Cycle with MacDowell's From an Old Garden, op. 26 (1887), which may have been the inspiration for Chadwick's 1892 set. Both collections use anthropomorphic flower texts by Boston poets, but the six poems by Margaret Deland used by MacDowell are brief and understated in contrast to the dense imagery of Bates's poems. Although MacDowell was himself a piano virtuoso, he resisted the temptation to employ thick textures, instead varying the piano techniques to support and answer the voice without overpowering it. MacDowell's vocal lines are more accessible to amateur singers, and the set lasts only eight minutes in contrast to the 33 minutes of Chadwick's set.

Siebert and Kairoff are experienced musicians who have performed and recorded many different types of repertoire. They have done a great service by choosing to make these Chadwick songs available to listeners after a century of silence. The recording deserves a place in the collections of libraries and performers with an interest in American music. Though not the most engaging or important part of his compositional output, these works broaden our understanding of Chadwick's repertoire and expand our knowledge of nineteenth-century tastes in Boston.