Chadwick was a typical representative of the "New England School" of late Romantic American composers. His Symphonic Sketches was one of the few pieces that hung on and wasn't neglected as other works and composers of the New England School were. Although he wrote three large and academically respectable symphonies up to the year 1893, thereafter he wrote works that can be classed as lighter works in symphonic form. In addition to this half-hour long set of pictorial movements, he also composed a Sinfonietta and a Suite Symphonique.

The opening movement, "Jubilee," is in a well-realized and concise sonata-allegro form, a very up-tempo piece in which the composer obviously feels liberated because he decided not to call the whole work a "symphony." So he composes very loosely and naturally.

The second movement, "Noël," has a double meaning. It is a lullaby to mother and baby. Obviously the direct association is with Christmas, the Madonna, and Jesus. But it is also a tender portrait of Chadwick's own son Noël, born the same year he wrote it.

While the other movements are from the years 1895 and 1896, Chadwick wrote the scherzo movement, "Hobgoblin," in 1905. Chadwick takes a motive from Mendelssohn's music to A Midsummer Night's Dream associated with Puck (the "hobgoblin") and turns him into an all-American brat. The final movement, "A Vagrom Ballad," is based on a hobo song Chadwick heard while undertaking a commute to Springfield, MA, for a festival there.

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