Chadwick (1854-1931) was one of the leading members of the generation of American composers who preceded the Gershwin-Copland-Harris-Hanson-Piston-Thomson generation. Usually possessing European conservatory training, these composers were highly accomplished and very imaginative composers, but were dismissed by critics and younger composers from the 1920s onward as lacking a truly "American" quality to their music.

This brilliantly scored overture shows Chadwick¹s well-known light-hearted side. He wrote it in 1915 as a gift for the Norfolk (Connecticut) Festival, which was run by Chadwick¹s friend Horatio Parker (another composer of the same generation). Chadwick expected no payment or commission. After its premiere in June 3, it was widely played by American orchestras.

The subject is a Robert Burns poem. (About forty years later the English composer Malcolm Arnold wrote his own "Tam O¹Shanter Overture" on the same source; the two works make fascinating comparative listening.) After a long visit at the local pub, Tam makes his way home on his old horse on a stormy night and notices a gathering of witches and supernatural creatures at a deserted church. He creeps closer and sees them dancing to Scots music. Tam particularly enjoys watching the dancing of a witch in a short skirt ("cutty sark"). Forgetting himself, he exclaims "Weel done, cutty sark!" At that the fiends pursue him. He and his old horse strain themselves to the utmost to reach a bridge the spooks cannot cross, and succeed by the slimmest of margins. As Arnold later did, Chadwick depicted the wild carouse and Scots music with wild orchestral colors, but he concludes his overture with a section showing a sobered-up and repentant Tam.



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