George W. Chadwick

George Whitefield Chadwick was well known to the American musical community as a native composer of unusual merit. His fairly numerous symphonies, operas, overtures, songs and choral[e]s, won him a distinctive place in his country’s musical achievement of a generation ago. If his creative work was distinctively of his period, and has lost its vogue along with other products of the time in which he wrote, his style was unmistakably his own and he still holds the place of leading American composer for that day. Personally warm-hearted, sometimes quick-tongued, loyal in his friendship and outspoken in his dislikes, a man’s man and comrade and an amusing talker when he chose, he was typical in some respects of the New England stock from which he came, but of warmer and quicker temperament and spirit than New Englanders are usually supposed to be. The vigor and nervousness of his temperament, his warm and sincere sentiment, colored both his personality and his music—which at its best was original and American in its vitality and swing.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1933 Century Association Yearbook