Vasari, and Crowe and Cavelcaselle can be consulted as to the Gaddi. Other notices appear here and there—such as La Cappella de’ Rinuccini in S. Croce di Firenze, by G. Ajazzi (1845).
(W. M. R.)
GADE, NIELS WILHELM (1817-1890), Danish composer, was born at Copenhagen, on the 22nd of February 1817, his father being a musical instrument maker. He was intended for his father’s trade, but his passion for a musician’s career, made evident by the ease and skill with which he learnt to play upon a number of instruments, was not to be denied. Though he became proficient on the violin under Wexschall, and in the elements of theory under Weyse and Berggreen, he was to a great extent self-taught. His opportunities of hearing and playing in the great masterpieces were many, since he was a member of the court band. In 1840 his Aladdin and his overture of Ossian attracted attention, and in 1841 his Nachklänge aus Ossian overture gained the local musical society’s prize, the judges being Spohr and Schneider. This work also attracted the notice of the king, who gave the composer a stipend which enabled him to go to Leipzig and Italy. In 1844 Gade conducted the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig during Mendelssohn’s absence, and on the latter’s death became chief conductor. In 1848, on the outbreak of the Holstein War, he returned to Copenhagen, where he was appointed organist and conductor of the Musik-Verein. In 1852 he married a daughter of the composer J.P.E. Hartmann. He became court conductor in 1861, and was pensioned by the government in 1876—the year in which he visited Birmingham to conduct his Crusaders. This work, and the Frühlingsfantasie, the Erlkönigs Tochter, Frühlingsbotschaft and Psyche (written for Birmingham in 1882) have enjoyed a wide popularity. Indeed, they represent the strength and the weakness of Gade’s musical ability quite as well as any of his eight symphonies (the best of which are the first and fourth, while the fifth has an obbligato pianoforte part). Gade was distinctly a romanticist, but his music is highly polished and beautifully finished, lyrical rather than dramatic and effective. Much of the pianoforte music, Aquarellen, Spring Flowers, for instance, enjoyed a considerable vogue, as did the Novelletten trio; but Gade’s opera Mariotta has not been heard outside the Copenhagen opera house. He died at Copenhagen on the 21st of December 1890.
GADOLINIUM (symbol Gd., atomic weight 157.3), one of the rare earth metals (see [Erbium]). The element was discovered in 1880 in the mineral samarskite by C. Marignac (Comptes rendus, 1880, 90, p. 899; Ann. chim. phys., 1880 [5] 20, p. 535). G. Urbain (Comptes rendus, 1905, 140, p. 583) separates the metal by crystallizing the double nitrate of nickel and gadolinium. The salts show absorption bands in the ultra-violet. The oxide Gd2O3 is colourless (Lecoq de Boisbaudran).
GADSDEN, CHRISTOPHER (1724-1805), American patriot, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1724. His father, Thomas Gadsden, was for a time the king’s collector for the port of Charleston. Christopher went to school near Bristol, in England, returned to America in 1741, was afterwards employed in a counting house in Philadelphia, and became a merchant and planter at Charleston. In 1759 he was captain of an artillery company in an expedition against the Cherokees. He was a member of the South Carolina legislature almost continuously from 1760 to 1780, and represented his province in the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and in the Continental Congress in 1774-1776. In February 1776 he was placed in command of all the military forces of South Carolina, and in October of the same year was commissioned a brigadier-general and was taken into the Continental service; but on account of a dispute arising out of a conflict between state and Federal authority resigned his command in 1777. He was lieutenant-governor of his state in 1780, when Charleston was surrendered to the British. For about three months following this event he was held as a prisoner on parole within the limits of Charleston; then, because of his influence in deterring others from exchanging their paroles for the privileges of British subjects, he was seized, taken to St Augustine, Florida, and there, because he would not give another parole to those who had violated the former agreement affecting him, he was confined for forty-two weeks in a dungeon. In 1782 Gadsden was again elected a member of his state legislature; he was also elected governor, but declined to serve on the ground that he was too old and infirm; in 1788 he was a member of the convention which ratified for South Carolina the Federal constitution; and in 1790 he was a member of the convention which framed the new state constitution. He died in Charleston on the 28th of August 1805. From the time that Governor Thomas Boone, in 1762, pronounced his election to the legislature improper, and dissolved the House in consequence, Gadsden was hostile to the British administration. He was an ardent leader of the opposition to the Stamp Act, advocating even then a separation of the colonies from the mother country; and in the Continental Congress of 1774 he discussed the situation on the basis of inalienable rights and liberties, and urged an immediate attack on General Thomas Gage, that he might be defeated before receiving reinforcements.
GADSDEN, JAMES (1788-1858), American soldier and diplomat, was born at Charleston, S.C., on the 15th of May 1788, the grandson of Christopher Gadsden. He graduated at Yale in 1806, became a merchant in his native city, and in the war of 1812 served in the regular U.S. Army as a lieutenant of engineers. In 1818 he served against the Seminoles, with the rank of captain, as aide on the staff of Gen. Andrew Jackson. In October 1820 he became inspector-general of the Southern Division, with the rank of colonel, and as such assisted in the occupation and the establishment of posts in Florida after its acquisition. From August 1821 to March 1822 he was adjutant-general, but, his appointment not being confirmed by the Senate, he left the army and became a planter in Florida. He served in the Territorial legislature, and as Federal commissioner superintended in 1823 the removal of the Seminole Indians to South Florida. In 1832 he negotiated with the Seminoles a treaty which provided for their removal within three years to lands in what is now the state of Oklahoma; but the Seminoles refused to move, hostilities again broke out, and in the second Seminole War Gadsden was quartermaster-general of the Florida Volunteers from February to April 1836. Returning to South Carolina he became a rice planter, and was president of the South Carolina railway. In 1853 President Franklin Pierce appointed him minister to Mexico, with which country he negotiated the so-called “Gadsden treaty” (signed the 30th of December 1853), which gave to the United States freedom of transit for mails, merchandise and troops across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and provided for a readjustment of the boundary established by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquiring 45,535 sq. m. of land, since known as the “Gadsden Purchase,” in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. In addition, Article XI. of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which bound the United States to prevent incursions of Indians from the United States into Mexico, and to restore Mexican prisoners captured by such Indians, was abrogated, and for these considerations the United States paid to Mexico the sum of $10,000,000. Ratifications of the treaty, slightly modified by the Senate, were exchanged on the 30th of June 1854; before this, however, Gadsden had retired from his post. The boundary line between Mexico and the “Gadsden Purchase” was marked by joint commissions appointed in 1855 and 1891, the second commission publishing its report in 1899. Gadsden died at Charleston, South Carolina, on the 25th of December 1858.