Edward MacDowell

warp"-the sonata form to the needs of his poetic purposes. Moreover, he declar

hemes for its poetic fulfilment-he has not composed a sonata movement, but a potpourri, which the form only aggravates." There can be little question of the success which has attended his

se. If one looks to these works for the particular kind of gratification which he is accustomed to derive, for example, from a sonata by Brahms (to name the most extreme of contrasts), he will not find it. It is impossible ful

o of profound pathos and dignity,-and in the dramatic and impassioned close (the scherzo is, I think, less good). Of this final allegro an exposition has been vouchsafed. While in the preceding movements, it is said, he aimed at expressing tragic details, in the last he has tried to generalise. He wished "to heighten the darkness of tragedy by making it follow closely on the heels of triumph. Therefore, he attempted to make the last movement a steadily progressive triumph, which, at its close, is utterly broken and shattered, thinking that the most poignant tragedy is that of catastrophe in the hour of triumph.... In doing this he has tried to epitomise the whole work." The meaning of the coda is thus made clear: a climax approached with the utmost pomp and brilliancy, and cut short by a precipitato descent in octaves, fff, ending with a reminiscence of the portentous subject of the introduction. It is a profou

ion of the MS. of t

ment typifies the coming of Arthur. The scherzo was suggested by a picture of Doré showing a knight in the woods surrounded by elves. The third movement was suggested by my idea of Guinevere. That following represents the passing of Arthur." MacDowell had intended to inscribe the scherzo: "After Doré"; but he finally thought better of this because, as he told Mr. N.J. Corey, "the superscription seemed to single it out too much from the other movements." Concerning this movement Mr. Corey writes: "The passage which it [the Doré picture] illustrates, may be found in [Tennyson's] Guinevere, in the story of the little novice, following a few lines after the well known 'Late, late, so la

" in praising MacDowell's work; in reference to the "Sonata Eroica" it has an emphatic aptness, for nobility is the keynote of this music. If the work, as a whole, has not the dynamic power of the "Tragica," the weight and gravity of substance, it is both a lovelier and a more lovable work, and it is everywhere more si

forth the "Woodland Sketches," the "Sea Pieces," and the songs of op. 56 and op. 58; and he had, evidently, examined deeply into the resources and potentialities of his art. He had hitherto done nothing quite like these two later sonatas; they are based upon larger and more intricate plans than their

allen on a d

ters in the r

mson in the

ulderi

the steal

'round Hara

Skald's s

es of ba

drun'

d, Siegmu

s predilection for extended chord formations and for phrases of heroic span-as in, for example, almost the whole of the first movement. The pervading quality of the musical thought is of a resistless and passionate virility. It is steeped in the barbaric and splendid atmosphere of the sagas. There are pages of epical breadth and power, passages of

" suite, had he attained an equal magnitude, an equal scope and significance. Nowhere else in his work are the distinguishing traits of his genius so strikingly disclosed-the breadth and reach of imagination, the magnetic vitality, the richness and fervour, the conquering poetic charm. Here you will find a beauty which is as "the beauty of the men that ta

inspiration, in particular, to the legends comprised in the famous Cycle of the Red Branch: that wonderful group of epics which comprises, among other tales, the story of the matchless Deirdré,-whose loveliness was such, so say the chroniclers, that "not upon the ridge of earth was

ow Keltic ta

rhymes th

song, and

Cuchullin

on of the sonata he wrote to

er, do not entirely fit the music, and which I hope to use in another musical form. They may serve, however, to aid the understanding of the stimmung of the sonata.

from the original MS.

el in the sonata as a whole; but in the coda of the last movement (of which I sha

ought and fo

y folk and D

queenly sun

obes, red

ast linger

mself in l

a giant

eath's wo

pproach the

e to iron

mad daughter

ring maidens

g fingers, co

luggard dead

monstrous Th

soul dared

on its shou

s of its p

a preening b

of the d

watchers k

in was

rey MacDo

t my 'motto' [the original motto-the verses which I have quoted above] spread beyond the music; therefore I am going to make a different work of the former, and for the sonata I adopted the modest quatrain that is printed in it.... Like the third, this fourth

s brief motto. It would be juster to say, rather, that he has recalled in his music the very life and presence of the Gaelic prime-that he has "unbound the Island harp." Above all, he has achieved that "heroic beauty" which, believes Mr. Yeats, has been fading out of the arts since "that decadence we call progress set voluptuous beauty in its place"-that heroic beauty which is of the very essence of the imaginative life of the primitive Celts, and which the Celtic "revival" in contemporary

us exordium with which the work opens, and which is sustained, with few deviations, throughout the work. Deirdré he has realised exquisitely in his middle movement: that is her image, in all its fragrant loveliness. MacDowell has limned her musically in a manner

is which furnished MacDowell with the theme that he celebrates in the lines of verse which I have quoted above. I believe that he

ke a tall pillar-stone, the grave of a warrior slain there in some ancient war. With difficulty he reached it and he leaned awhile against the pillar, for his mind wandered, and he knew nothing for a space. After that he took off his brooch, and removing the torn bratta [girdle], he passed it round the top of the pillar, where there was an indentation in the stone, and passed the ends under his arms and around his breast, tying

or nobility of conception, for majestic solemnity and pathos, is a music

f style, weight of momentum, and irresistible plangency of emotion, is comparable to the four sonatas which have been considered