Edward MacDowell

outgivings of his talent, our native musical art was still little more than a pallid reproduction of European models. MacDowell did not at that time, of course, give positive evidence of the vital

possessed an artistic figure of constantly increasing stature. MacDowell commanded, from the start, an

ccent it was which, a score of years ago, set MacDowell in a place apart among native American music-makers. No one else was saying such charming and memorable things in so fresh and individual a way. We had then, as we have had since, composers who were entitled to respect by virtue of their expert and effective mastery of a familiar order of musical expression,-who spoke correctly a language acquired in the schools of Munich, Leipzig, and Berlin. But they had nothing to say that was both important and new. They had grace

piano pieces. Not greatly important music, this, measured beside that which he afterward put forth; but possessing an individual profile, a savour, a tang, which gave it an immediately recognised distinction. A new voice spoke out of it, a fresh and confident, an eloquent and forceful, voice. It betrayed Germanic influences: of that there was no question; yet it was strikingly rich in personal accent. Gradually his art came to find, through vari

that he has definitely passed beyond the reach of our praise, to say that he gave to the art of creative music in this country (I am thinking now only of music-makers

nned upon truly heroic lines; they are large in scope and of epical sweep and breadth; and his "Indian" suite is the most impressive orchestral work composed by an American. He wrote two piano concertos,-early works, not of his best inspiration,-a large number of poetically descriptive smaller works, and almost half a hundred songs of frequent loveliness and character. The three symphonic poems, "Hamlet and Ophelia," "Lancelot and Elaine,

of the Celtic imagination. He is unfailingly noble-it is, in the end, the trait which most surely signalises him. "To every man," wrote Maeterlinck, "there come noble thoughts, thoughts that pass across his heart like great white birds." Such thoughts came often to MacDowell-they seem always to be hovering not far from the particular territory to which his inspiration has led him, even when he is most gayly inconsequent; and in his finest and largest utterances, in the sonatas, their majestic trend appears somehow to have suggested the sweeping and splendid flight of the musical idea. Not often subtle in impulse or recondite in mood, his art has nothing of the impalpability, the drifting, iridescent vapours of Debussy, nothing of the impenetrable backgrounds of Bra

Pater felt in William Morris's "King Arthur's Tomb," the tyranny of a moon which is "not tender and far-off, but close down-the sorcerer's moon, large and feverish," and the presence of a colouring that is "as of scarlet lilies"; and there is the suggestion of poison, with "a sudden bewildered sickening of life and all things." In the music of MacDowell there is no hint of these matters; there is rather the infinitely touching emotion of those rare beings who are in their interior lives both passionate and shy: they know desire and sorrow, supreme ardour and enamoured tenderness; but they do not know either the languor or the dementia of eroticism; they are haunted and swept by beauty, but they are not sickened or oppressed by it. Nor is their passion mystical and detached. MacDowell in his music is full-blooded, but he is never febrile: in this (though certainly in nothing else) he is like Brahms. The passion by which he is swayed i

pectacle; he was most sensitively attuned to its tragedy and its comedy,-he was never more potent, more influential, indeed, than in celebrating its events. He is at the summit of his powers, for example, in the supe

the magniloquent passion, that are Strauss's; his art is far less elaborate and subtle than that of such typical moderns as Debussy and d'Indy. But it has an order of beauty that is not the

company of the greater dead; it is enough to avow the conviction that he possessed genius o

OF

NS OF EDWA

for voice and piano

umber

1883): Pr?ladium--Presto--Andantino and

of Five Songs, f

1. My L

Love

the

ight

nds o

e and Fugue, f

no (1883): Pr?ludium--Fugato--Rhapso

, in A-minor, for pian

enata, for

ic Pieces, for pian

tches

tions, for piano (1

umor

s, for piano (1884)

of the

Rev

e of th

or piano, four hands (

e of the

Bal

or piano, four hands (18

ork's

In

The

it of

helia, symphonic poem

o, in D-minor, for pia

itions, for piano (

M

radl

Cza

Elaine, symphonic poe

rden, for voice and pi

he M

he C

Yello

e Blu

e Mig

male chorus (1890): 1.

prin

e Fis

er Goethe, for piano

Sie

the Mo

lver

lute

e Blu

phonic poem for or

Alda, two fragments (after the So

Heine, for piano (1887):

cotc

om Lo

e Pos

Sheph

onol

Poems, for piano (

he B

oons

Win

, for voice and pia

radl

I

for voice and pia

My

for violoncello a

oncert, in F-sharp

les, for piano (188

ns le

se And

t Little Pieces, for pian

oubr

L

W

C

Vil

weet

Epi

tudies, for pian

ing

Taran

ma

bes

he F

of the

ok

d

ow D

erm

lo

erz

gar

or voice and piano (1890)

theart,

Beami

ove's Sw

Lovel

Ask b

for male chorus (18

e of th

orchestra (1891-1893[21

umme

n Oc

hepherde

rest

Songs, for mixed chor

umber

xed chorus with four-hand

a Tragica, fo

so Studies, for piano

to Pe

ild

provi

lfin

lse t

Bur

Blu

r?um

Marc

Impr

Polo

ce and piano (1893): 1. The

summer

olk

onfi

nd Croons in t

the

The

ugh the

an) Suite, for orche

ove

n Wa

D

lage F

d Rigaudon, fo

onata (Eroica),

tches, for piano (18

l'-o-t

Old Tryst

n Au

an Ind

a Wate

m Uncl

eserte

a Mead

ld at

es, for male voices

om th

e Cru

s, for male voices

Collier

male voices (1898): 1. A

summer

s, for piano (189

Wanderin

.D.

tarl

S

m the

Nau

Mid-

for voice and pian

n Bent Low

id Sing

Gloaming S

onata (Norse),

for voice and piano

Sun

y Maide

onata (Keltic),

for voice and piano (

r Spri

the Go

es, for piano (1902)

Br'er

a Germ

Sala

aunted

oulderin

Idyls, for piano (19

idsu

id-w

Sweet

Deep

ndia

n Old W

m Puri

m a Lo

Joy of

T OPUS

ntury, for male chorus (1897): 1

Gloaming S

tno

opus number,-9,-were composed at a much later

under which these compositi

d concerning this designation, and preferred to entitle the work: "First Symphonic Poem (a. 'Hamlet'; b. 'Ophelia')." This alteration is written in MacDowe

's "Melpomene" overture, Paine's "Oedipus Tyrannus" prelude, a romance and polonaise for violin and orchestra by Henry Holden Huss, and songs by Margaret Ruthven Lan

r the publication of the rest of the music. The earlier portion, comprising four parts ("In a Haunted Forest

ayed by MacDowell in Boston on March 18, 1892, at the last of th

to this period is the set of "Woodland Sketches"; these were composed during the last par

n merely beautiful tones for their utterance. Music, for instance, that would give us the emotion-if I may call it that-of a series of exploding bombshells could hardly be called 'absolute music'; yet that is exactly what the opening of the last movement of the so-called 'Moonlight' Sonata meant to Miss Thackeray, who speaks of it in her story, 'Beauty and the Beast.'... If this is abstract music, it is bad. We know, however, that Beethoven had some poetic idea in his mind as he wrote this; but as he never gave the clew to the world, the music has been swallowed as 'absolute m

, is referred to. The original edition, wh

e "Sea Piece

ding piece were used again by MacDowell in two of

to this Orchestra and its fo

suite by several years, and of which I shall write in a

dependent for its complete understanding upon a knowledge of its literary basis? MacDowell exhibits

, like the "No

of the "Eight

p. 58,

es given here are those

Posth

afterward revised them extensively, rearranged their order, and added the

ents. The third, "In October," though composed at the same time as the others, and intended for inclusion i