Chester Edward Ide (June 13, 1877 – March 18, 1944) was an American composer and music teacher, primarily known for his operettas, some major instrumental works, and his participatory teaching methods.
Chester Edward Ide was born on June 13, 1877, in Springfield, Illinois,[1][2] to a prominent local family.
[14] Other works performed on the program included Wagner's Huldigungmarsch, Beethoven's Lenore Overture No.3, and excerpts from Massenet's Le Cid.
His first marriage was around 1907 to Margaret Dorothy Townley Lawrence (married names Ide then Taylor), of the Springfield area.
Ide wrote "Waltz to Margaret", his first wife, copyright 1909, to be performed "very slowly and wistfully".
[6] Ide had moved to Greenwich, Connecticut,[25] and had found work as a music teacher at the Edgewood School.
[25] Ide's Piano Sonata in A was premiered in 1933 by his pianist friend John Kirkpatrick, at the Greenwich Library, in a concert celebrating the composer's 60th birthday.
[30][31] On May 10, 1944, the Edgewood School Orchestra made private recordings of four of his compositions in the studio of radio station WSRR in Stamford, Connecticut.
[29][31] Following his death, Ide's daughter Elfrid and his friend John Kirkpatrick promoted her father's music extensively.
[34][35] In 1983, Ide's "Evening Solitude" and "Serenade" (arranged by John Kirkpatrick) were performed at Carnegie Hall.
[6] As part of the centenary commemoration of Ide's birth, the Center for Chamber Music published a catalog of his works.
[6][19] The Chester Ide Scores[39] collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contains a copy.
This catalog was cited as being largely responsible for the growing interest in Ide's music in subsequent years.
A reviewer stated that although Ide's music is "conservative in the extreme,… [his works] are finely crafted, though, and they have an ease and flow and tunefulness that (let us hope) will never go completely out of fashion.
A reviewer for the Illinois State Journal who attended the 1904 performance of Ide's Idyllic Dances described his music thus: This music and the orchestral setting given it is surprisingly creditable for a first work, and the credit is divided about equally between the things the composer has done and the things he has refrained from doing.
It was in New York City that he seemed to have developed his theory of music education, which he used in later years teaching in New England schools.
[8] In imitation of the ancient Greeks, he emphasized three things in music training: rhapsodizing (improvising or composing on the spot), sight-reading, and the ability to accompany (especially requiring a sense of harmony).
[8] His approach also included the idea of "total theater", which centers on creative and educational audience participation.
[6][21] He made use of ethnic and folk melodies in his theory training, especially as an aid to student composition.