eh'." Chadwick has
two folk-songs of his own, however, which are superb. "He Loves Me" is
a tender, cradle-song-like bit of delicious color. The "Lullaby" is a
genuinely interesting study in this overworked form. "The Lily" has
the passionate lyricism of Chaminade, and "Sweet Wind that Blows" is a
fine frenzy. The "Nocturne" is dainty and has its one good climax.
"Before the Dawn" has some of Chadwick's best work; it is especially
marked by a daring harmonic--you might say--_impasto_.

His principal works, besides those mentioned, may be catalogued (I am
unable to do more than catalogue most of them, having seen only one of
them, "The Lily Nymph," performed, and having read the score of only
the "Melpomene" overture): Concert overtures, "Rip Van Winkle"
(written in Leipzig, 1879, and played there the same year), "Thalia"
(1883), "Melpomene" (1887), "The Miller's Daughter" (1887), and
"Adonais" (in memory of a friend, 1899); Symphonies, in C (1882), in B
(1885); an Andante for string orchestra (1884), and numerous pieces of
chamber-music. In the case of the cantata, "The Lily Nymph,"
Chadwick's art was quite futilized by the superb inanities of the book
he used. The "Melpomene" is a work of infinitely more specific
gravity. It is one of the most important of American orchestral works.

As his "Thalia" was an "overture to an imaginary comedy," so this, to
an imaginary tragedy. It has been played by the Boston Symphony and
many other orchestras. It has that definiteness of mood with that
indefiniteness of circumstance in which music wins its most dignified
prosperity.

It opens with the solitary voice of the English horn, which
gives a notable pathos (read Berlioz on this despairful
elegist, and remember its haunting wail in the last act of
"Tristan und Isolde"). The woeful plaint of this voice
breathing above a low sinister roll of the tympanum
establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other
instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the
whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets,
the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful
strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends the slow
introduction, the materials of which are taken from the two
principal subjects of the overture, which is built on the
classic sonata formula. The first subject is announced by the
first violins against the full orchestra; the subsidiary
t