Edward MacDowell

reality a man of singularly lovable personality, and to his intimates a winning and delightful companion, he lacked utterly the social gift, that capacity for ready and

not uncertain element of charm: for it was akin to the shyness, the absence of assertiveness, the entirely genuine modesty, which were of his dominant traits. Yet in his contact with the outer world this incurable shyness sometimes, as I have said, led him into giving a grotesquely untrue impression of himself: he was at times gauche, blunt, awkwardly infelicitous in speech or silence, when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be considerate, gentle, symp

well

finished "Keltic" Sonata. Standing in the center of a crowded room, surrounded by enthusiastically effusive strangers who were voluble-and not overpenetrating-in their expressions of appreciation, he presented a picture of unhappiness, of mingled helplessness and discomfort, which was almost pathetic in its genuineness of woe. I was standing near him, and during a momentary lull in the amiable siege of which he was the distressed object, he whispered tragically to me: "Can't we get out of this?-Do you know the way to the back doo

t étude (op. 36) for the first time: "Don't put that dreadful thing on your programme"; and for certain of his more popular and hackneyed pieces, as the "Hexentanz" and the much-mauled and over-sentimental song, "Thy Beaming Eyes," he had a detestation that was amusing in its virulence. He regretted at times that his earlier orchestral works-"Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine"-had been published; and he was in

AR MR.

. While my outgivings have always been sincere, I feel only too often their inadequacy to express my ideals; thus what you speak of as accompli

riding, walking, hunting. He had a special relish for gardening and for photography, and he liked to undertake laborious jobs in carpentry, at which he was quite deft. That his feeling for the things of the natural world was acutely sensitive and coloured by imagination and emotion is abundantly evidenced in his music. He was fond of taking long, leisurely drives and rides through the rich and varied hill country about Peterboro, and many of the impressions that were then garnered and stored h

irs. He read, and discussed with eagerness and acumen, scientific, economic, and historical deliverances; and he enjoyed books of travel, biographies, dramatic literature. Mark Twain he adored, and delighted to quote, and almost to the end of his life he read with inexhaustible pleasure Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle Remus." In the later years of his activity h

riously in many literatures, and the knowledge which he had acquired he applied to the elucidation of aesthetic and philosophical problems touching the theory and practice of music. He had meditated deeply concerning the art of which he was always a tireless student-had come to conclusions concerning its actual and assumed records, its tendencies, its potentialities. He was a vigorous

found vent in a low, rich chuckle, which, with the lighting up of his eyes, was wholly and immediately irresistible. The large head, the strong, rather boyish face, with its singular mobility and often sweetness of expression, the bright, vital eyes, set wide apart, the abundant (though not long), dark hair tinged with grey, the white skin, the sensitive mouth, rather large and full-lipped, the strong jaws, the sturdy and athletic build,-he was somewhat above medium height, with broad shoulders, powerful arms, and large, muscul

mirer who had affirmed in print that certain imaginative felicities in some of the verse which

, and Co., I would light out without delay. Good heavens! I blush at the thought of it! A header through a

h, he found that many of the manuscripts had been rewritten several times: "I would find a movement begun and continued for

me one sent him at about this time, relates Mr. Humiston, a programme of an organ recital which contained this same "Wild Rose" piece. "He was not pleased with the idea, having in mind the expressionless organ of a dozen years ago when only a small

ed up the space with rests, at the end of which he placed a double bar. When his book was returned the page was covered with correct

almost everything from Handel, except that he was b

restaurant one day, just after his resignation from Columbia had been accepted. "We sat over our coffee and cigars until nearly four o'clock, and among other things he talked of that [the Columbia matter]. There

when alone, a theme, an idea, might come to him, and almost before he knew it he had sketched something in a rudimentary form. He had a fancy that the technique of composition suffered as much as that of the piano if it was allowed to go for weeks and months without exercise. The constant work and excitement that his winters in Boston and New York involv

hnical "warming up." There were many days when he did not write a note, but he always intended to, and usually did. When he was absorbed in a particular composition he kept at it, almost night and day, save for the hours he always tried to spend in the open air, and two hours in the

the piano as many as fifty times, changing the value or significance of a note; as a result, his piano writing is almost always "pianistic." In one respect he was sometimes careless: in the noting of the expression marks. By the time he arrived at that duty he was usually tired

h was joined to the main body of the house by a covered passage; in this way he could hear nothing of the household workings, and was unaware of the chance caller. No one was ever allowed to intrude upon him, save his wife. Yet certain outside noises were still apparent; so the log cabin in the woods was built. There he used to go nearly every morning, coming home when he felt disposed, and usually going to the golf grounds for a game before dinner, which

nging to reduce to actual form the impossible. He was always disheartened when a work was finished, but he was too sane in his judgment not to have moments when he could estimate fairly the quality of what he had written. But those were rare moments; as a rule, it was

as I wrote it, it seemed to express a world-sorrow rather than a particularised grief." His estimate of the value of the music has, naturally, no extraordinary importance; but my conviction is that, in this instance, his judgment was correct. As to the sonatas, he cared most for the "Keltic"; after that, for the "Eroica," as a whole; though I doubt whether there was anything in the two that he cared for quite as he did for the Largo in t

Pieces" those he liked best were: "To the Sea," "From the Depths," "In Mid-Ocean"; of the "Fireside Tales": the "Haunted House," "Salamander," "'Brer Rabbit"; and he had a tender feeling fo

estral, forms, for him, and his dream of an ultimate leisure was a dream for which his friends can be thankful.

sky stirred him mightily; Brahms did not as a rule give him pleasure, though certain of that master's more fertile moments compelled his appreciation. Grieg he delighted in. To him he dedicated both his "Norse" and "Keltic" sonatas. In response to his

GEN, 26

ing of

EAR

kind letter and for the sympathi you feel for my music. Of course it

ut unfortunately my delicat health does not seem to agree. At all events, if we are

y best

dear

very

RD G

ccepting the dedication of the "Norse" Sonata. O

interest, a letter written (in German) by Grieg to Mrs

STIA

er 14,

R M

one the capacity not only for moods of the highest transport, but for an unspeakable sorrow tenfold more profound. This is the unsolvable riddle. An artist so ideally endowed [ein so ideal angelegter Künstler] as MacDowell must ask himself: Why have I received from nature this delicately strung lyre, if I were better off without it? So unmerciful is Life that every artist must ask himself this question. The only consolation is: Work-yes, even the severest labours. ... But: the artist is an optimist. Otherwise

greeting t

respe

RD G

onal colour, and in it I believe we can see the tendency I allude to [the tendency "to elevate what should be a means of adding power and intensity to musical speech, to the importance of musical speech itself"]. It stuns by its glorious magnificence of tonal texture. The suggestion, at the beginning, of the rising sun, is a mighty example of the overwhelming power of to

ver what he called the "queerness" of a sonata by the Belgian Lekeu for violin and piano, which he had read or heard. It is likely that he would have found little to attract him in the more characteristic music of d'

one-poets not by means of the contrapuntal methods of his day, but in spite of them. The laws of canon and fugue are based upon as prosaic a foundat

in forming our judgments of art.... If we read on one page of some history (every history of music has such a page) that Mozart's sonatas are sublime; that they far transcend anything written for the harpsichord or clavichord by Haydn or his contemporaries, we are apt to echo the saying ... But let us look the thing straight in the face: Mozart's sonatas are compositions entirely unworthy

osition' of the first movement, he throws in an extra little theme that laps over his frame with a jaunty disregard of the rules that is delightful.... His technic of piano writing was perfect; compared with Beethoven's it was a revelation. He never committed the fault of mere virtuoso writing, which is remarkable when we consider how strong a temptation there must have been to do so. In his piano music c

s: it represents the rhapsodical revery of an inspired poet to whom no imaginative vagary seems strange or alien, and who has the faculty of relating his visions, never attempting to give them coherence, and unaware of their cha

as with Liszt [in his piano music] the embellishment itself made the starting-point for almost a new art in tonal combination, the effects of which one sees on every hand to-day. To realise its influence one need only compare the easy mastery of the arabesque displayed i

oken word, emancipated from the materialism of acting, painting, an

t of narrow theory against expansion and progress, the most amusing mistakes are constantly occurring. For example, the first movement of this sonata [the so-called "Moonlight"]-which, as we know, is a poem of profound sorrow and the most poignant resignation alternating with despair-has, by some strange torturing, been cited as being in strict sonata-form by one theorist (Harding: Novello's primer), is dubbed a free fantasy by another (Matthews), and is described as being in song-form by another: all of which is somewhat weakened by the dictum of still another theorist that the music is absolutely formless! A form of so doubtful an identity can surely lay small claim to any serious intellectual value.... In our modern days we too often, Procrustes-like, make our ideas to fit the forms. We put our guest

ing, besides merely symbolising it, and thus we have in poetry the coining of onomatopoetic words-words that will bring the things they stand for more vividly before our eyes and minds. Now music may express all that words can express and much more, for it is the natural means of expression for all animals, mankind included. If musical sounds were accepted as symbols for things we would have another speech. It seems strange to say that by means of music one could say the most commonplace thing, as, for instance: 'I am going to take a walk'; yet this is precisely what the Chinese have been doing for centuries. For such things, however, our word-symbols do perfectly well, and such a symbolising of musical sounds must

subject may well be quoted somewhat in detail, since they have not always been justly represented or fully understood. In the following excerpt, from a lecture

by the Bohemian Dvorak-though what the Negro melodies have to do with Americanism in art still remains a mystery. Music that can be made by 'recipe' is not music, but 'tailoring.' To be sure, this tailoring may serve to cover a beautiful thought; but-why cover it? and, worst of all, why cover it (if covered it must be: if the trademark of nationality is indispensable, which I deny)-why cover it with the badge of whilom slavery rather than with the stern but at least manly and free rudeness of the North American Indian? If what is called local tone colour is necessary to music (which it most emphatically is not), why not adopt some of the Hindoo Ragas and modes-each one of which (and the modes alone number over seventy-two) will give an individual tonal character to the music written according to its rules? But the means of 'c

his career in America, has written for me his impressions, and I shall quote them, rather than any of my own;

f playing in public, he was so self-distrustful that when he came on the stage and sat down on the piano stool he

ot urge him with more persistence, for he might have yielded in the end, and I would have got a more intime idea of his playing; for after all a musical tête-à-tête like that is preferable to any public hearing. I never heard Grieg play at a concert, but I am sure that the hour I sat near him in his Bergen home, while he played and his wife sang, gave

ng; but once every few years he set to work and got his fingers into a condition which enabled them to follow his intentions; and those intentions, it is n

, Grieg, were likely to be represented, and he also did missionary work for Templeton Strong and other Americans. His interpretation of the music of other com

at is, he played with an insight, a subtlety of expression, which only a creative performer has at his command. I doubt if Chopin himself could have rendered one of his pieces with more ravishing delicacy than MacDowell showed in playing his 'To a Wild Rose.' I doubt if Liszt could have shown a more overwhelming dramatic power than MacDowe

as a piano player I am indebted to his friend and pupil, Mr. T.P. Currier, who had follow

, play fast more easily than he could slowly. One of his ever-present fears was that in performance his fingers would run away with him. And many hours were spent in endeavours to control such an embarrassing tendency. T

From the time of his complete immersion in composition, his ideas of pianistic effects, of tone colour, gradually led him farther and farther away from conventional pianism. Scales and arpeggios, as commonly rendered, had no longer interest or charm for him. He cared for finger passage

e fingers also had no well-defined knuckle movement. It appears, therefore, that he could not, if he would, have succeeded on more conventional technical lines. Gradually he developed great strength and intense activity in the middle joints, which enabled him to play with a ve

mmon in its way as was his velocity. And in this field of technic, during his later years, when in composition his mind turned almost wholly to this mode of expression, he reached a plane of tonal effect which, for variety, from vague, shadowy, mysterious ppp, to virile, orchestral ffff, has never been surpassed by any pian

forcing upon the ear the phrase, never the tickling of mere notes; a really marvellous command and use of both pedals,-these were the characteristics of MacDowell's pianistic art as he displayed it in the exposition of his own works. Unquestionably he was a born pianist. If it had not been fo

New Hampshire, where Mac

r to find him, fearing something might be wrong, as he had not come to me, he had gone. When I got home, accompanied by two friends, there he was almost in a corner, white, and as if he were guilty of some crime, and he said as we came in: 'I can play better than that. But I was so tired!' We almost wept with the pity of the u

d planned this work upon novel lines: there was to be comparatively little singing, and much emphasis was to be laid upon the orchestral commentary; the action was to be carried on by a combination of pantomime and tableaux, and the scenic element was to be conspicuous-a suggestion which he got in part from E.A. Abbey's Holy G

. Mr. Philip Hale, whose long friendship with MacDowell gives him the right to speak with peculiar authority, and whose habit is that of sobriety in speech, has written of him in words whose justice and felicity cannot be bettered: "A man of blameless life, he was never pharasaical; he was compassionate toward the slips and failings of poor humanity. He was a true patriot, proud and

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