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diff --git a/old/14109.txt b/old/14109.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..18933f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14109.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4686 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Edward MacDowell, by Lawrence Gilman + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Edward MacDowell + +Author: Lawrence Gilman + +Release Date: November 21, 2004 [eBook #14109] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDWARD MACDOWELL*** + + +E-text prepared by David Newman and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 14109-h.htm or 14109-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/1/0/14109/14109-h/14109-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/1/0/14109/14109-h.zip) + + + + + +EDWARD MACDOWELL + +A Study + +by + +LAWRENCE GILMAN + +Author of _Phases of Modern Music_; _The Music of Tomorrow_; _Stories +of Symphonic Music_; _A Guide to Strauss' "Salome"_; _Debussy's +"Pelleas el Melisande": A Guide to the Opera_; _Aspects of Modern +Opera_; etc. + +London: John Lane, The Bodley Head +New York: John Lane Company +MCMIX + +1908 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Edward MacDowell] + + + + +TO HENRY T. FINCK + + + + +PREFACE + + +This study is based upon the monograph on MacDowell which I +contributed in 1905 to the "Living Masters of Music" series. That +book could not, of course, remain in the series after the death of +MacDowell three years later; it was therefore taken from its place +and used as a foundation for the present volume, which supersedes it +in every respect. The biographical portion is almost wholly new, and +has been greatly enlarged, while the chapters dealing with +MacDowell's music have been revised and extended. + +In completing this survey of one who in his art is still of to-day, I +have been poignantly conscious throughout of the fact that posterity +has an inconvenient habit of reversing the judgments delivered upon +creative artists by their contemporaries; yet to trim deftly one's +convictions in the hope that they may elastically conform to any one +of a number of possible verdicts to be expected from a capricious +futurity, is probably as dangerous a proceeding as to avow, without +equivocation or compromise, one's precise beliefs. It will therefore +be understood that the critical estimates which are offered in the +following pages have been set down with deliberation. + +I desire to acknowledge gratefully the assistance which I have +received from various sources: Primarily, from Mrs. Edward MacDowell, +who has rendered help of an indispensable kind; from Mr. Henry T. +Finck, who furnished me with his views and recollections of MacDowell +as a pianist; and from reminiscences and impressions contributed by +Mr. W.H. Humiston, Miss J.S. Watson, and Mr. T.P. Currier--pupils and +friends of MacDowell--to _The Musician_, and by Mr. William Armstrong +to _The Etude_, parts of which I have been privileged to quote. +MacDowell wrote surprisingly few letters, and comparatively little of +his correspondence is of intrinsic or general interest. I am indebted +to Mr. N.J. Corey for permission to quote from several in his +possession; while for the use of letters written to MacDowell and his +wife by Liszt and Grieg my thanks are due to Mrs. MacDowell. + +L.G. + +DIXVILLE NOTCH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, +September 18, 1908. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +THE MAN + + I RECORDS AND EVENTS + + II PERSONAL TRAITS AND VIEWS + + +THE MUSIC-MAKER + + III HIS ART AND ITS METHODS + + IV EARLY EXPERIMENTS + + V A MATURED IMPRESSIONIST + + VI THE SONATAS + + VII THE SONGS + +VIII SUMMARY + + LIST OF WORKS + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +PLATE NO. + + I EDWARD MACDOWELL (Frontispiece) + + II MACDOWELL AT FOURTEEN + From a sketch drawn by himself + + III MACDOWELL AT EIGHTEEN, AS A MEMBER OF RAFF'S CLASS AT THE + FRANKFORT CONSERVATORY + + IV A SKETCH OF LISZT BY MACDOWELL, DRAWN IN 1883 + + V FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM LISZT TO MACDOWELL + + VI A LETTER FROM LISZT TO MACDOWELL ACCEPTING THE DEDICATION OF + THE FIRST PIANO CONCERTO + + VII MACDOWELL AND TEMPLETON STRONG + From a photograph taken at Wiesbaden in 1888 + +VIII MACDOWELL IN 1892 + + IX FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM GRIEG TO MACDOWELL, ACCEPTING THE + DEDICATION OF THE "NORSE" SONATA. ONE OF GRIEG'S RARE ATTEMPTS + AT ENGLISH COMPOSITION + + X THE HOUSE AT PETERBORO, NEW HAMPSHIRE, WHERE MACDOWELL SPENT + HIS SUMMERS + + XI THE PIAZZA AND GARDEN WALK AT PETERBORO + + XII A WINTER VIEW OF THE PETERBORO HOUSE + +XIII THE "HOUSE OF DREAMS UNTOLD"--THE LOG CABIN IN THE WOODS AT + PETERBORO WHERE MACDOWELL COMPOSED, AND WHERE MOST OF HIS + LATER MUSIC WAS WRITTEN + + XIV FACSIMILE OF A PORTION OF THE MS. OF THE "SONATA TRAGICA" + + XV FACSIMILE OF A PASSAGE FROM THE ORIGINAL MS. OF THE "KELTIC" + SONATA + + XVI THE MUSIC-ROOM AT PETERBORO + + + + + ... we grow immortal, + And that ... harp awakens of itself + To cry aloud to the grey birds; and dreams, + That have had dreams for fathers, live in us. + +--_The Shadowy Waters._ + + + + +THE MAN + +CHAPTER I + +RECORDS AND EVENTS + + +Edward MacDowell, the first Celtic voice that has spoken commandingly +out of musical art, achieved that priority through natural if not +inevitable processes. Both his grandfather and grandmother on his +father's side were born in Ireland, of Irish-Scotch parents. To his +paternal great-grandfather, Alexander MacDowell, the composer traced +the Scottish element in his blood; his paternal great-grandmother, +whose maiden name was Ann McMurran, was born near Belfast, Ireland. +Their son, Alexander, born in Belfast, came to America early in the +last century and settled in New York, where he married a countrywoman, +Sarah Thompson, whom he met after his arrival in the New World. A son, +Thomas (Edward's father), was born to them in New York--where, until +his retirement some time ago, he was engaged in business for many +years. He married in 1856 Frances M. Knapp, a young American woman of +English antecedents. Five years later, on December 18, 1861, their +third son, Edward Alexander (he discarded the middle name toward the +end of his life), was born at 220 Clinton Street, New York--a +neighbourhood which has since suffered the deterioration common to +many of what were once among the town's most irreproachable +residential districts. + +From his father, a man of genuine aesthetic instincts, Edward derived +his artistic tendencies and his Celtic sensitiveness of temperament, +together with the pictorial instinct which was later to compete with +his musical ability for decisive recognition; for the elder MacDowell +displayed in his youth a facility as painter and draughtsman which his +parents, who were Quakers of a devout and sufficiently uncompromising +order, discouraged in no uncertain terms. The exercise of his own gift +being thus restrained, Thomas MacDowell passed it on to his younger +son--a somewhat superfluous endowment, in view of the fact that the +latter was to demonstrate so ample a gift for an equally effective +medium of expression. + +[Illustration: MACDOWELL AT FOURTEEN +(From a Sketch drawn by Himself)] + +Edward had his first piano lessons, when he was about eight years +old, from a friend of the family, Mr. Juan Buitrago, a native of +Bogota, Colombia, and an accomplished musician. Mr. Buitrago was +greatly interested in the boy, and had asked to be permitted to teach +him his notes. Their piano practice at this time was subject to +frequent interruptions; for when strict supervision was not exercised +over his work, Edward was prone to indulge at the keyboard a fondness +for composition which had developed concurrently with, and somewhat +at the expense of, his proficiency in piano technique. He was not a +prodigy, nor was he in the least precocious, though his gifts were as +evident as they were various. He was not fond of drudgery at the +keyboard, and he lacked the miraculous aptness at acquirement which +belongs to the true prodigy. He was unusual chiefly by reason of the +versatility of his gifts. His juvenile exercises in composition were +varied by an apt use of the pencil and the sketching board. He liked +to cover his music books and his exercises with drawings that showed +both the observing eye and the naturally skilful hand of the born +artist. Nor did music and drawing form a sufficient outlet for his +impulse toward expression. He scribbled a good deal in prose and +verse, and was fond of devising fairy tales, which were written not +without a hint of the imaginative faculty which seems always to have +been his possession. + +He continued his lessons with Mr. Buitrago for several years, when he +was taken to a professional piano teacher, Paul Desvernine, with whom +he studied until he was fifteen. He received, too, at this time, +occasional supplementary lessons from the brilliant Venezuelan, +Teresa Carreno. When he was in his fifteenth year it was determined +that he should go abroad for a course in piano and theory at the +Paris Conservatory, and in April, 1876, accompanied by his mother, he +left America for France. He passed the competitive examination for +admission to the Conservatory, and began the Autumn term as a pupil +of Marmontel in piano and of Savard in theory and composition--having +for a fellow pupil, by the way, that most remarkable of contemporary +music-makers, Claude Debussy, whom MacDowell described as having +been, even then, a youth of erratic and non-conformist tendencies. + +MacDowell's experiences at the Conservatory were not unmixed with +perplexities and embarrassment. His knowledge of French was far from +secure, and he had considerable difficulty in following Savard's +lectures. It was decided, therefore, that he should have a course of +tuition in the language. A teacher was engaged, and Edward began a +resolute attack upon the linguistic _chevaux de frise_ which had +proved so troublesome an impediment--a move which brought him, +unexpectedly enough, to an important crisis in his affairs. + +On one occasion it happened that, during these lessons in French, he +was varying the monotony of a study hour by drawing, under cover of +his lesson-book, a portrait of his teacher, whose most striking +physical characteristic was a nose of extravagant bulk. He was +detected just as he was completing the sketch, and was asked, much to +his confusion, to exhibit the result. It appears to have been a +remarkable piece of work as well as an excellent likeness, for the +subject of it was eager to know whether or not MacDowell had studied +drawing, and, if not, how he acquired his proficiency. Moreover, he +insisted on keeping the sketch. Not long after, he called upon Mrs. +MacDowell and told her, to her astonishment, that he had shown the +sketch to a certain very eminent painter--an instructor at the Ecole +de Beaux Arts--and that the painter had been so much impressed by the +talent which it evidenced that he begged to propose to Mrs. MacDowell +that she submit her son to him for a three-years' course of free +instruction under his personal supervision, offering also to be +responsible for his support during that time. The issue was a +momentous one, and Mrs. MacDowell, in much perplexity of mind as to +the wisest settlement of her son's future, laid the matter before +Marmontel, who, fearful of losing one of his aptest pupils, urgently +advised her against diverting her son from a musical career. The +decision was finally left to MacDowell, and it was agreed that he +should continue his studies at the Conservatory. Although it seems +not unlikely that, with his natural facility as a painter and +draughtsman and his uncommon faculties of vision and imagination, he +would have achieved distinction as a painter, it may be questioned +whether in that case music would not have lost appreciably more than +art would have gained. + +Conditions at the Conservatory were not to the taste of MacDowell, +for he found his notions of right artistic procedure frequently +opposed to those that prevailed among his teachers and fellow +students. His growing disaffection was brought to a head during the +summer of 1878. It was the year of the Exposition, and MacDowell and +his mother attended a festival concert at which Nicholas Rubinstein +played in memorable style Tchaikovsky's B-flat minor piano concerto. +His performance was a revelation to the young American. "I never can +learn to play like that if I stay here," he said resolutely to his +mother, as they left the concert hall. Mrs. MacDowell, whose fixed +principle it was to permit her son to decide his affairs according to +his lights, thereupon considered with him the merits of various +European Conservatories of reputation. They thought of Moscow, +because of Nicholas Rubinstein's connection with the Conservatory +there. Leipsic suggested itself; Frankfort was strongly recommended, +and Stuttgart seemed to offer conspicuous advantages. The latter +place was finally determined upon, and Mrs. MacDowell and her son +went there from Paris at Thanksgiving time, having agreed that the +famous Stuttgart Conservatory would yield the desired sort of +instruction. + +The choice was scarcely a happy one. It did not take MacDowell long +to realise that, if he expected to conform to the Stuttgart +requirements, he would be compelled to unlearn all that he had +already acquired--would have virtually, so far as his technique was +concerned, to begin _de novo_. Rubinstein himself, MacDowell was told +by one of the students, would have had to reform his pianistic +manners if he had placed himself under the guidance of the Stuttgart +pedagogues. Nor does the system of instruction then in effect at the +Conservatory appear to have been thorough even within its own sphere. +MacDowell used to tell of a student who could play an ascending scale +superlatively well, but who was helpless before the problem of +playing the same scale in its descending form. + +His mother, disheartened over the failure of Stuttgart to justify her +expectations, was at a loss how best to solve the problem of her +son's immediate future. Having heard much of the ability of Carl +Heymann, the pianist, as an instructor, Mrs. MacDowell thought of the +Frankfort Conservatory, of which Joachim Raff was the head, and where +Heymann would be available as a teacher. + +She learned from a friend, to whom she had written for advice, that +the pianist had promised soon to visit her at her home in Wiesbaden, +and it was suggested that the MacDowells pay her a visit at the same +time, and thus benefit by the opportunity of becoming acquainted with +Heymann. Mrs. MacDowell and her son were not slow to avail themselves +of this proposal, and the end of the year 1878 found them in +Wiesbaden. Here they met Heymann, who had just concluded a +triumphantly successful _tournee_ of the European capitals. They +heard him play, and were impressed by his mastery and poetic feeling. +Heymann was not, however, to begin teaching at the Frankfort +Conservatory until the following autumn, so MacDowell remained in +Wiesbaden, studying composition and theory with the distinguished +critic and teacher, Louis Ehlert, while his mother returned to +America. + +[Illustration: MACDOWELL AT EIGHTEEN (THE FIGURE AT THE EXTREME LEFT +OF THE GROUP) AS A MEMBER OF RAFF'S CLASS AT THE FRANKFORT +CONSERVATORY] + +"Ehlert," MacDowell has written, "was very kind to me, and when I +asked him for 'lessons' he refused flatly, but said he would be glad +for us to 'study together,' as he put it. This rather staggered me, +as my idea in leaving Paris was to get a severe and regenerating +overhauling. I worked hard all winter, however, and heard lots of new +music at the _Cur Haus_, which was like manna in the desert after my +long French famine. Ehlert, who thought that Heymann was not the man +for me, spoke and wrote to Von Bulow about me; but the latter, +without even having seen me, wrote Ehlert a most insulting letter, +asking how Ehlert dared 'to propose such a silly thing' to him; that +he was not a music teacher, and could not waste his time on an +American boy, anyway. So, after all, I went to Frankfort and entered +the conservatory." MacDowell's first interview with Raff, in the +autumn of 1879, was, as he relates, "not promising." "Heymann took me +to him and told him, among other things, that, having studied for +several years the 'French School' of composition, I wished to study +in Germany. Raff immediately flared up and declared that there was no +such thing nowadays as 'schools'--that music was eclectic nowadays; +that if some French writers wrote flimsy music it arose simply from +flimsy attainments, and such stuff could never form a 'school.' +German and other writers were to be criticised from the same +standpoint--their music was bad, middling, or good; but there was no +such thing as cramping it into 'schools' nowadays, when all national +musical traits were common property." + +MacDowell remained in the Conservatory for two years, studying +composition with Raff and piano with Heymann. His stay there was +eminently satisfactory and profitable to himself. He found both Raff +and Heymann artistic mentors of an inspiring kind; in Raff, +particularly, he encountered a most sympathetic and encouraging +preceptor, and an influence at once potent and engrossing--a force +which was to direct the currents of his own temperament into definite +artistic channels. + +For Heymann as a pianist MacDowell had a fervent admiration. He spoke +of him as "a marvel," whose technique "seemed mysteriously capable of +anything." "When I went to him," MacDowell has said, "I had already +transposed most of the fugues and preludes of Bach (Paris ideas of +'thoroughness'!) and had gone through much rough technical work. +Heymann let me do what I wanted; but in hearing him practise and play +I learned more in a week than I ever had before." When Heymann, who +had already begun to show symptoms of the mental disorder which +ultimately overcame him, left the Conservatory in 1881, he +recommended MacDowell as his successor--a proposal which was +cordially seconded by Raff. But there were antagonistic influences at +work within the Conservatory. MacDowell's candidacy was opposed by +certain of the professors, on account, it was said, of his "youth"; +but also, doubtless, because of the advocacy of Heymann, who was not +popular with his colleagues; for he dared, MacDowell has said, "to +play the classics as if they had been written by men with blood in +their veins." So MacDowell failed to get the appointment. He +continued, unofficially, as a pupil of Heymann, and went to him +constantly for criticism and advice. + +MacDowell began at this time to take private pupils, and one of these +pupils, an American, Miss Marian Nevins, was later to become his +wife. He was then living in lodgings kept by a venerable German +spinster who was the daughter of one of Napoleon's officers. She was +very fond of her young lodger, and through her he became acquainted +with the work of Erckmann-Chartrian, whose tales deeply engrossed him +at this time. Later he moved to the Cafe Milani, on the Zeil, at that +time an institution of considerable celebrity. As a teacher he made a +rather prominent place for himself; the recommendation of Raff--who +had said to one of MacDowell's pupils that he expected "great things" +of him--had helped at the start, and his personality counted for not +a little. His appearance at this time (he was then nineteen years +old) is described as having been strikingly unlike that of the +typical American as known in Germany. "His keen and very blue eyes, +his pink and white skin, reddish mustache and imperial and jet black +hair, brushed straight up in the prevalent German fashion, caused him +to be known as 'the handsome American.'" Teaching at that time must +have been a sore trial to him. He was, as he continued to be +throughout his life, painfully shy; yet he seems, strangely enough, +to have had, even then, the knack for imparting instruction, for +quickening the interest and stimulating the enthusiasm of those who +came under his guidance, which in later years made him so remarkable +a teacher. + +In 1881 MacDowell applied for the vacant position of head piano +teacher at the Conservatory in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, +and was engaged. He found it an arduous and not too profitable post. +He has described it as "a dreary town, where the pupils studied music +with true German placidity." They procured all their music from a +circulating library, where the choice of novelties was limited to +late editions of the classics and a good deal of sheer trash, poor +dance music and the like. His work, which was unmitigated drudgery, +consumed forty hours a week. For a time he took up his quarters in +Darmstadt; but he missed the attractions of Frankfort; so throughout +his term he travelled on the railroad twice daily between the two +towns. In addition to his regular work at the Conservatory, he +undertook private lessons, going by train once a week to the +Erbach-Fuerstenau castle at Erbach-Fuerstenau, a wearisome three-hour +journey. The castle was a mediaeval _Schloss_, with a drawbridge and +moat. There his pupils were little counts and countesses, +discouragingly dull and sleepy children who spoke only German and +Latin, and who had the smallest interest in music. MacDowell gave +them lessons in harmony as well as piano-playing, and one day, in the +middle of an elaborately simplified exposition of some rudimentary +point, he heard a gentle noise, looked around from the piano, and +discovered his noble young pupils with their heads on their arms, +fast asleep. MacDowell could never remember their different titles, +and ended by addressing them simply as "mademoiselle" and "monsieur," +to the annoyance of the stern and ceremonious old chatelaine, the +Baroness of Rodenberg. + +The twelve hours a week which he spent in railway travelling were +not, though, wholly unprofitable, for he was able to compose on the +train the greater part of his second "Modern Suite" for piano (op. +14). This was the second of his compositions which he considered +worthy of preservation, its predecessor being the "First Modern +Suite," written the year before in Frankfort. Much other music had +already found its way upon paper, had been tried in the unsparing +fire of his criticism, which was even then vigorous and searching, +and had been marked for destruction--a symphony, among other efforts. +His reading at this time was of engrossing interest to him. He was +absorbed in the German poets; Goethe and Heine, whom he was now able +to read with ease in the original German, he knew by heart--a +devotion which was to find expression a few years later in his +"Idyls" and "Poems" (op. 28 and 31). He had begun also to read the +English poets. He devoured Byron and Shelley; and in Tennyson's +"Idyls of the King" he found the spark which kindled his especial +love for mediaeval lore and poetry. Yet while he was enamored of the +imaginative records of the Middle Ages, he had little interest, oddly +enough, in their tangible remains. He liked, for example, to summon a +vision of the valley of the Rhone, with its slow-moving human streams +flowing between Italy and the North, and with Sion still looking down +from its heights, where the bishops had been lords rather than +priests. But this was for him a purely imaginative enchantment. He +cared little about exploring the actual and visible memorials of the +past: to confront them as crumbling ruins gave him no pleasure, and, +as he used to say, he "hated the smells." It was this instinct which, +in his visits to the cathedrals, prompted him to stand as far back as +possible while the Mass was being said. To see in the dim distance +the white, pontifical figures moving gravely through the ritual, to +hear the low tones, enthralled and stirred him; but he shrank from +entering the sacristy, with its loud-voiced priests describing +perfunctorily the relics: that was a disillusionment not to be borne +with. + +[Illustration: A SKETCH OF LISZT BY MACDOWELL DRAWN IN 1883] + +Having found that his labours at Darmstadt were telling upon his +health, MacDowell resigned his position there and returned to +Frankfort. Here he divided his time between his private teaching and +his composition. He was ambitious also to secure some profitable +concert engagements as a pianist. He had made occasional appearances +at orchestral concerts in Wiesbaden, Frankfort, Darmstadt, but these +had yielded him no return save an increase of reputation. + +At Raff's instigation he visited Liszt at Weimar in the spring of +1882, armed with his first piano concerto (op. 15). This work he had +just composed under amusing circumstances. One day while he was +sitting aimlessly before his piano there came a knock at his door, +and in walked, to his startled confusion, his master, Raff, of whom +MacDowell stood in unmitigated awe. "The honor," he relates, "simply +overwhelmed me. He looked rather quizzically around at my untidy +room, and said something about the English translation of his +_Welt-Ende_ oratorio (I found out after, alas, that he had wanted me +to copy it in his score for him; but with his inexplicable shyness he +only hinted at it, and I on my side was too utterly and idiotically +overpowered to catch his meaning); then he abruptly asked me what I +had been writing. I, scarcely realising what I was saying, stammered +out that I had a concerto. He walked out on the landing and turned +back, telling me to bring it to him the next Sunday. In desperation, +not having the remotest idea how I was to accomplish such a task, I +worked like a beaver, evolving the music from some ideas upon which I +had planned at some time to base a concerto. Sunday came, and I had +only the first movement composed. I wrote him a note making some +wretched excuse, and he put it off until the Sunday after. Something +happened then, and he put it off two days more; by that time I had +the concerto ready." Except for three lines of passage work in the +first part, the concerto remains to-day precisely as MacDowell +finished it then. + +In the event, the visit to Liszt, which he had dreaded, was a +gratifying surprise. That beneficent but formidable personage +received him with kindly courtesy, and had Eugen D'Albert, who was +present, play the orchestral part of the concerto which MacDowell had +brought with him in manuscript, arranged for two pianos. Liszt +listened attentively as the two young musicians played it +through,--not too effectively,--and when they had finished he +commended it in warm terms. "You must bestir yourself," he warned +D'Albert, "if you do not wish to be outdone by our young American"; +and he praised the boldness and originality of certain passages in +the music, especially their harmonic treatment. + +What was at that time even more cheering to MacDowell, who had not +yet come to regard himself as paramountly a composer, was Liszt's +praise of his piano playing. He returned to Frankfort greatly +encouraged, and he was still further elated to receive soon after a +letter from Liszt in which, referring to the first "Modern Suite," +which MacDowell had sent to him, the Abbe wrote: + + "... Since the foundation of the General Society of German + Musicians, the definitive making up of the programs is entrusted + to me, and I shall be very glad to recommend the execution of + your work. + + "Will you be good enough to give to your master, my old friend, + J. Raff, the assurance of my highest esteem and admiration. + + "F. LISZT. + + "Budapest. April 13, 1882." + +[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM LISZT TO MACDOWELL +(SEE PAGE 18)] + +The nineteenth annual convention of the _Allgemeiner Deutscher +Musik-Verein_ was held that year at Zuerich, from the 9th to the 12th +of July; and at the fifth concert of the series, on July 11, MacDowell +played his first piano suite. Both the music and his performance of it +were praised. A contemporaneous account speaks of the composer as "an +earnest and modest musician, free from all mannerisms," who "carried +his modesty so far that he played with his notes before him, though he +cannot have felt any particular necessity for having them there." He +"was recalled enthusiastically, and with many bravos, and may be proud +of the success he has achieved." Until then, as MacDowell confessed, +with engaging candour, to Mr. Henry T. Finck, he "had never waked up +to the idea" that his music could be worth actual study or memorising. +"I would not have changed a note in one of them for untold gold, and +_inside_ I had the greatest love for them; but the idea that any one +else might take them seriously had never occurred to me." A year +later, upon Liszt's recommendation, the suite and its successor, the +"Second Modern Suite," op. 14, were published at Leipzig by the famous +house of Breitkopf and Haertel. "Your two pianoforte suites," wrote +Liszt from Budapest, in February of that year, "are admirable. I +accept the dedication of your concerto with sincere pleasure and +thanks." The suites were the first of MacDowell's works to appear in +print.[1] + +[1] The "Two Old Songs," which bear an earlier opus number,--9,--were +composed at a much later period--a fact which is betrayed by their +style. + +The death of Raff on June 25, 1882, brought to MacDowell his first +profound sorrow. There was a deep attachment between pupil and master, +and MacDowell felt in Raff's death the loss of a sincere friend, and, +as he later came to appreciate, a powerful ally. The influential part +which Raff bore in turning MacDowell's aims definitely and permanently +toward creative rather than pianistic activity could scarcely be +overestimated. When he first went to Paris, and during the later years +in Germany, there had been little serious thought on his part, or on +the part of his family, concerning his composition; his evident talent +for piano-playing had persistently overshadowed his creative gifts, +and had made it seem that his inevitable career was that of a +virtuoso. As he wrote in after years: "I had acquired from early +boyhood the idea that it was expected of me to become a pianist, and +every moment spent in 'scribbling' seemed to be stolen from the more +legitimate work of piano practice." It was Raff--Raff, who said to him +once: "Your music will be played when mine is forgotten"--who opened +his eyes. + +The two following years,--from the summer of 1882 till the summer of +1884--were increasingly given over to composition, though MacDowell +continued his private teaching and made a few appearances in concert. +He continued to try his hand at orchestral writing, and in this +pursuit he was greatly favoured by the willingness of the conductors +of the _Cur-Orchesters_ at Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, and elsewhere, to +"try over" in the rehearsal hour his experiments. His requests for +such a trial reading of his scores were seldom refused, and the +practical training in instrumentation which was afforded by the +experience he always regarded as invaluable. Much that he tested in +this manner was condemned as a result of the illuminating, if +chastening, revelations thus brought about; and almost all of his +orchestral writing which he afterward thought fit to publish received +the benefit of such practical tests. + +The music which dates from this period comprises the three songs of +opus 11 ("Mein Liebchen,"[2] "Du liebst mich nicht," "Oben, wo +die Sterne gluehen"); the two songs of op. 12 ("Nachtlied" and "Das +Rosenband"); the Prelude and Fugue (op. 13); the second piano suite +(op. 14)--begun in the days of his Darmstadt professorship; the +"Serenade" (op. 16); the two "Fantasiestuecke" of op. 17: +"Erzaehlung" and the much-played "Hexentanz"; the "Barcarolle" +and "Humoreske" of op. 18; and the "Wald-Idyllen" (op. 19): +"Waldesstille," "Spiel der Nymphen," "Traeumerei," "Dryadentanz." + +[2] I give the German titles under which these compositions were +originally published. + +In June, 1884, MacDowell returned to America, and on July 21, at +Waterford, Connecticut, he was married to his former pupil, Miss +Marian Nevins--a union, which, for perfection of sympathy and +closeness of comradeship, was, during the quarter of a century for +which it was to endure, nothing less than ideal. A few days later +MacDowell and his bride sailed from New York for Europe, innocent of +any very definite plans for the immediate future. They visited Exeter +and Bath, and then went to London, where they found lodgings at No. 5, +Woburn Place. There MacDowell's interest in the outer world was +divided between the British Museum, where he found a particular +fascination in the Egyptian and Syrian antiquities, and the +Shakespearian performances of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. He was +captivated by their performance of "Much Ado About Nothing," and made +a sketch for a symphonic poem which was to be called "Beatrice and +Benedick"--a plan which he finally abandoned. Most of the material +which was to form the symphonic poem went ultimately to the making of +the scherzo of the second piano concerto, composed during the +following year. + +Returning to Frankfort, MacDowell and his wife lived for a short time +in a pension in the Praunheimer Strasse, keeping very much to +themselves in two small rooms. Upon their return from a brief +excursion to Paris, they found less restricted quarters in the Hotel +du Nord. In September of this year MacDowell learned of an +advantageous position that had been vacated at the Wuerzburg +Conservatory, and, assisted by letters from Frau Raff, Marmontel (his +former instructor at the Paris Conservatory), and the violinist +Sauret, he sought the place. But again, as at Frankfort three years +before, his youth was in his disfavour, and he was courteously +rejected. + +[Illustration: A LETTER FROM LISZT TO MACDOWELL ACCEPTING THE +DEDICATION OF THE FIRST PIANO CONCERTO (SEE PAGE 19)] + +The following winter was given over largely to composition. The +two-part symphonic poem, "Hamlet and Ophelia," his first production of +important significance, was composed at this time. The "Drei +Poesien" (op. 20) and "Mondbilder" (op. 21), both written for +four-hand performance, also date from the winter of 1884-85, and the +second piano concerto was begun. The "Moon Pictures" of op. 21 ("The +Hindoo Maiden," "Stork's Story," "In Tyrol," "The Swan," "Visit of the +Bear"), after Hans Christian Andersen, were at first intended to form +a miniature orchestral suite; but an opportunity arose to have them +printed as piano duets, and the orchestral sketches were destroyed--a +regrettable outcome, as it seems. + +His pupils, he found, were scattered, and he gave himself up without +restraint to the pleasures of creative writing. These were days of +quiet and deep happiness. He read much, often aloud in the +evening--fairy-tales, of which he was devotedly fond, legendary lore +of different countries, mediaeval romances, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, +Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs, Victor Hugo, Heine; and also Mark Twain. +Later, in the spring, the days were devoted partly to composition and +partly to long walks with his wife in the beautiful Frankfort woods, +where was suggested to MacDowell the particular mood that found +embodiment, many years later, in one of the last things that he wrote: +"From a German Forest," in the collection of "Fireside Tales." + +The following summer (1885), the death of a friend of his earlier +Frankfort days, Lindsay Deas, a Scotchman, left vacant in Edinburgh +the post of examiner for the Royal Academy of Music, and Deas's family +presented MacDowell's name as a candidate. A trip to London was +undertaken for the purpose of securing the place, if possible--since +composition alone could not be depended upon for a livelihood; but +again his youth, as well as his nationality and his "modern +tendencies," militated against him. He was obliged to admit that he +had been a protege of "that dreadful man Liszt," as the potentate of +Weimar was characterised by Lady Macfarren, an all-powerful factor in +the control of the institution; and that proving finally his +abandonment to a nefarious modernity, he was again rejected. + +Upon their return to Germany the MacDowells moved from Frankfort to +Wiesbaden, where they spent the winter of 1885-86, living in a small +pension. The first concerto (op. 15) had recently been published by +Breitkopf and Haertel. The same year (1885) was marked by the +completion of the second concerto in D-minor, begun at Frankfort in +the previous winter, and the publication by Breitkopf and Haertel of +the full score of "Hamlet and Ophelia,"[3] with a dedication to Henry +Irving and Ellen Terry, from whose performances in London MacDowell +had caught the suggestion for the music. In the summer of 1886 +MacDowell and his wife again yielded to their passion for travelling +and went to London to buy furniture, for they had wearied of living in +pensions and hotels and had determined to set up housekeeping. When +they returned they hired a little flat in the Jahnstrasse and +installed themselves therewith just enough furniture to give them +countenance. Here Mrs. MacDowell suffered an illness which threatened +for a time to bring a tragic termination to their happiness, and +through which the hope of a child was lost to them. + +[3] The published score of this opus bears the title (in German): +"Hamlet; Ophelia: Two Poems for Grand Orchestra." But MacDowell +afterward changed his mind concerning this designation, and preferred +to entitle the work: "First Symphonic Poem (a. 'Hamlet'; b. 'Ophelia')." +This alteration is written in MacDowell's handwriting in his copy of +the printed score. When "Lancelot and Elaine" was published three +years later it bore the sub-title: "Second Symphonic Poem." + +One afternoon in the spring of 1887 MacDowell and his friend Templeton +Strong, a brilliant American composer who had recently moved from his +home in Leipzig to Wiesbaden, were tramping through the country when +they came upon a dilapidated cottage on the edge of the woods, in the +Grubweg. It had been built by a rich German, not as a habitation, but +as a kind of elaborate summer house. The situation was enticing. The +little building stood on the side of the Neroberg, overlooking the +town on one side, with the Rhine and the Main beyond, and on the other +side the woods. The two Americans were captivated by it, and nothing +would do but that MacDowell should purchase it for a home. There was +some question of its practicability by his cooler-headed wife; but +eventually the cottage was bought, with half an acre of ground, and +the MacDowells ensconced themselves. There was a small garden, in +which MacDowell delighted to dig; the woods were within a stone's +throw; and he and Strong, who were inseparable friends, walked +together and disputed amicably concerning principles and methods of +music-making, and the need for patriotism, in which Strong was +conceived to be deficient. + +This was a time of rich productiveness for MacDowell; and the life +that he and his wife were able to live was of an ideal serenity and +detachment. He was now devoting his entire energy to composition. He +put forth during these years at Wiesbaden the four pieces of op. 24 +("Humoresque," "March," "Cradle Song," "Czardas"); the symphonic poem +"Lancelot and Elaine" (op. 25); the six songs, "From An Old Garden," +to words by Margaret Deland (op. 26); the three songs for male chorus +of op. 27 ("In the Starry Sky Above Us," "Springtime," "The +Fisherboy"); the "Idyls" and "Poems" for piano (op. 28 and op. 31), +after Goethe and Heine; the symphonic poem "Lamia" (op. 29); the two +"Fragments" for orchestra after the "Song of Roland": "The Saracens" +and "The Lovely Alda" (op. 30); the "Four Little Poems" for +piano--"The Eagle," "The Brook," "Moonshine," "Winter" (op. 32); the +three songs of op. 33 ("Prayer," "Cradle Hymn," "Idyl") and the two of +op. 34 ("Menie," "My Jean"); and the "Romance" for 'cello and +orchestra. He had, moreover, the satisfaction of knowing that his work +was being received, both in Europe and in his own country, with +interest and respect. His reputation had begun unmistakably to spread. +"Hamlet and Ophelia" had been performed at Darmstadt, Wiesbaden, +Baden-Baden, Sondershausen, Frankfort. On March 8, 1884, his former +teacher, Teresa Carreno, had played his second piano suite at a +recital in New York; in March of the following year two movements from +the first suite were played at an "American Concert" given at Princes' +Hall, London; on March 30, 1885, at one of Mr. Frank Van der Stucken's +"Novelty Concerts" in New York, Miss Adele Margulies played the second +and third movements from the first piano concerto. In the same year +Mme. Carreno played on tour in America three movements from the second +suite, and in the following September she played at the Worcester +Festival of that year the "Hexentanz" of op. 17. On November 4, +1886, the "Ophelia" section of op. 22 was performed at the first of +Mr. Van der Stucken's "Symphonic Concerts" at Chickering Hall, New +York. Mr. H.E. Krehbiel, reviewing the work in the _Tribune_, praised +the orchestration as "brilliant" ("though the models studied are +rather more obvious than we like"), the melodic invention as +"beautiful" and as having a poetical mood and characteristic outline. +He considered that the music deserved repetition during the course of +the season, and pronounced it "a finer work in every respect than the +majority of the novelties which have come to us this season with +French and English labels." Mr. Henry T. Finck, writing in the +_Evening Post_, characterised the work as "an exquisitely conceived +tone-poem, charmingly orchestrated and full of striking harmonic +progressions." A year after the performance of the "Ophelia" in New +York Mr. Van der Stucken produced its companion piece, "Hamlet." In +April, 1888, at the first of a course of "pianoforte-concerto +concerts" given by Mr. B.J. Lang at Chickering Hall, Boston, +MacDowell's first concerto was played by Mr. B.L. Whelpley. "The +effect upon all present," wrote Mr. W.F. Apthorp in the _Transcript_, +"was simply electric." The concerto "was a surprise, if ever there was +one. We can hardly," he declared, "recall a composition so full of +astonishing and unprecedented effects [it will be recalled that this +concerto was composed in 1882, when MacDowell was nineteen years old]. +The work was evidently written at white heat; its brilliancy and +vigour are astounding. The impression it made upon us, in other +respects, is as yet rather undigested... But its fire and forcibleness +are unmistakable." These opinions are of interest, for they testify to +the prompt and ungrudging recognition which was accorded to +MacDowell's work, from the first, by responsible critics in his own +country. + +He might well have felt some pride in the sum of his achievements at +this time. He had not completed his twenty-seventh year; yet he had +published a concerto and two orchestral works of important +dimensions--"Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine"; most of +the music that he had so far written had been publicly performed, and +almost invariably praised with warmth; and he was becoming known in +Europe and at home. His material affairs, however, were far from being +in a satisfactory or promising condition; for there was little more +than a precarious income to be counted upon from his compositions; and +he had given up teaching. Musicians from America began coming to the +little Wiesbaden retreat to visit the composer and his wife, and he +was repeatedly urged to return to America and assume his share in the +development of the musical art of his country. It was finally decided +that, all things considered, conditions would be more favorable in the +United States; and in September, 1888, the MacDowells sold their +Wiesbaden cottage, not without many pangs, and sailed for their own +shores. + +[Illustration: MACDOWELL AND TEMPLETON STRONG +From a photograph taken at Wiesbaden in 1888] + +They settled in Boston, as being less huge and tumultuous than New +York, and took lodgings in Mount Vernon Street. In later years they +lived successively at 13 West Cedar Street and at 38 Chestnut Street. +Though all of his more important music was as yet unwritten, MacDowell +found himself already established in the view of the musical public as +a composer abundantly worthy of honour at the hands of his countrymen. +He made his first public appearance in America, in the double capacity +of pianist and composer, at a Kneisel Quartet concert in Chickering +Hall, Boston, on November 19, 1888, playing the Prelude, Intermezzo, +and Presto from his first piano suite, and, with Kneisel and his +associates, the piano part in Goldmark's B-flat Quintet. He was +cordially received, and Mr. Apthorp, writing in the _Transcript_ of +his piano playing, praised his technique as "ample and brilliant," and +as being especially admirable "in the higher phases of playing"; "he +plays," wrote this critic, "with admirable truth of sentiment and +musical understanding." Of the early and immature suite he could not +well write with much enthusiasm, though he found in it "life and +brightness." + +In the following spring MacDowell made a more auspicious appearance, +and one which more justly disclosed his abilities as a composer, +when, on March 5, he played his second concerto, for the first time +in public, at an orchestral concert in Chickering Hall, New York, +under the direction of Mr. Theodore Thomas. His success was then +immediate and emphatic. Mr. Krehbiel, in the _Tribune_, praised the +concerto as "a splendid composition, so full of poetry, so full of +vigor, as to tempt the assertion that it must be placed at the head +of all works of its kind produced by either a native or adopted +citizen of America"; and he confessed to having "derived keener +pleasure from the work of the young American than from the +experienced and famous Russian"--Tchaikovsky, whose Fifth Symphony +was performed then for the first time in New York. "Several +enthusiastic and unquestionably sincere recalls," concluded the +writer, "were the tokens of gratitude and delight with which his +townspeople rewarded him." A month later MacDowell played the same +concerto in Boston, at a Symphony concert, under Mr. Gericke; his +performance of it evoked "rapt attention," and "the very heartiest of +plaudits, in which both orchestra and audience joined." + +In the summer of that year (1889) MacDowell and his wife went abroad. +He had been invited to take part in an "American Concert" at the Paris +Exposition, and on July 12, under Mr. Van der Stucken's direction, he +played his second concerto.[4] After a short stay on the continent, he +returned with his wife to America. + +[4] The rest of the programme, it may be interesting to note, +contained Arthur Foote's overture, "In the Mountains," Van der +Stucken's suite, "The Tempest," Chadwick'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 +Lang, Dudley Buck, Chadwick, Foote, Van der Stucken. The concert ended +with an "_ouverture festivale sur l'Hymne Americaine_, 'The Star +Spangled Banner,'" by Dudley Buck. + +MacDowell found in Boston a considerable field for his activity as +pianist and teacher. He took many private pupils, and he made, during +the eight years that he remained there, many public appearances in +concert. In composition, these years were the most fruitful of his +life. He wrote during this period the Concert Study for piano (op. +36); the set of pieces after Victor Hugo's "Les Orientales" (op. +37)--"Clair de lune," "Dans le Hamac," "Danse Andalouse"; the +"Marionettes" (op. 38); the "Twelve Studies" of op. 39; the "Six Love +Songs" (op. 40); the two songs for male chorus (op. 41)--"Cradle Song" +and "Dance of the Gnomes"; the orchestral suite in A-minor (op. 42) +and its supplement, "In October" (op. 42-A);[5] the "Two Northern +Songs" and "Barcarolle" (op. 43 and op. 44) for mixed voices; the +"Sonata Tragica" (op. 45); the 12 "Virtuoso Studies" of op. 46; the +"Eight Songs" (op. 47); the second ("Indian") suite for orchestra; the +"Air" and "Rigaudon" (op. 49) for piano; the "Sonata Eroica" (op. 50); +and the "Woodland Sketches" (op. 51). This output did not contain his +most mature and characteristic works--those were to come later, during +the last six years of his creative activity; yet the product was in +many ways a notable one, and some of it--the two sonatas, the "Indian" +suite, the songs of op. 47, the "Woodland Sketches"--was, if not +consistently of his very best, markedly fine and characteristic in +quality. This decade (from 1887 to 1897) saw also the publication of +all his work contained between his op. 22 ("Hamlet and Ophelia") and +op. 51 (the "Woodland Sketches") with the exception of the symphonic +poem "Lamia," which was not published until after his death. + +[5] This episode formed part of the suite in its original form, but +was not printed until several years after the publication of the rest +of the music. The earlier portion, comprising four parts ("In a +Haunted Forest," "Summer Idyll," "The Shepherdess' Song," "Forest +Spirits"), was published in 1891, the supplement in 1893. + +Meanwhile his prestige grew steadily. Each new work that he put forth +met with a remarkable measure of success, both among the general +public and at the hands of many not over-complacent critical +appraisers. On January 10, 1890, his "Lancelot and Elaine" was played +at a Boston Symphony concert under Mr. Nikisch. In September, 1891, +his orchestral suite in A-minor (op. 42) was performed for the first +time at the Worcester Festival, and a month later it was played in +Boston at a Symphony concert under Mr. Nikisch. In November of the +same year the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, under Bernhard Listemann, +performed for the first time, at the Tremont Theatre, his "Roland" +pieces, "The Saracens" and "The Lovely Alda." On the following +day--November 6, 1891--he gave his first piano recital, playing, in +addition to pieces by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Templeton Strong, P. +Geisler, Alabieff, and Liszt, his own "Witches' Dance," "Shadow Dance" +(op. 39), "The Eagle," the Etude in F-sharp (op. 36), the Prelude from +the first suite, and the fourth of the "Idyls" after Goethe. He +followed this with a second recital in January, 1892, at which he +played, among other things, the "Winter," "Moonshine," and "The +Brook," from the "Four Little Poems" (op. 32). Discussing the first of +these recitals, Mr. Philip Hale (in the _Boston Post_) wrote these +words, which have a larger application than their reference to +MacDowell: "No doubt, as a composer, he has studied and mastered form +and knows its value; but he prefers suggestions and hints and dream +pictures and sleep-chasings to all attempts to be original in an +approved and conventional fashion.... They [his compositions] are +interesting, and more than that: they are extremely characteristic in +harmonic colouring. Their size has nothing to do with their merits. A +few lines by Gautier stuffed with prismatic words and yet as vague as +mist-wreaths may in artistic worth surpass whole cantos of more famous +poets; and Mr. MacDowell has Gautier's sense of colour and knowledge +of the power of suggestion." His performance "was worthy of the +warmest praise ... seeing gorgeous or delicate colours and hearing the +voices of orchestral instruments, it is no wonder that Mr. MacDowell +is a pianist of rare fascination." On January 28, 1893, the "Hamlet +and Ophelia" was played, for the first time in Boston, by the Symphony +Orchestra under Mr. Nikisch; but a more important event was the first +performance[6] two months later of the "Sonata Tragica," which +MacDowell played at a Kneisel Quartet concert in Chickering Hall. +Concerning the sonata Mr. Apthorp wrote: "One feels genius in it +throughout--and we are perfectly aware that _genius_ is not a term to +be used lightly. The composer," he added, "played it superbly, +magnificently." MacDowell achieved one of the conspicuous triumphs of +his career on December 14, 1894, when he played his second concerto +with the Philharmonic Society of New York, under the direction of +Anton Seidl. He won on this occasion, recorded Mr. Finck in the +_Evening Post_, "a success, both as pianist and composer, such as no +American musician has ever won before a metropolitan concert audience. +A Philharmonic audience can be cold when it does not like a piece or a +player; but Mr. MacDowell ... had an ovation such as is accorded only +to a popular prima donna at the opera. Again and again he had to get +up and bow after every movement of his concerto; again and again was +he recalled at the close ... For once a prophet has had great honour +in his own country ... He played with that splendid kind of virtuosity +which makes one forget the technique." Concerning the concerto, Mr. +W.J. Henderson wrote (in the _Times_) that it was difficult to speak +of it "in terms of judicial calmness, for it is made of the stuff that +calls for enthusiasm. There need be no hesitation," he continued, "in +saying that Mr. MacDowell in this work fairly claims the position of +an American master. We may have no distinctive school of music, but +here is one young man who has placed himself on a level with the men +owned by the world. This D-minor concerto is a strong, wholesome, +beautiful work of art, vital with imagination, and made with masterly +skill." And Mr. James Huneker observed that "it easily ranks with any +modern work in this form. Dramatic in feeling, moulded largely, and +its themes musically eloquent, it sounds a model of its kind--the kind +which Johannes Brahms gave the world over thirty years ago in his +D-minor concerto." In March of the following year MacDowell gave two +piano recitals in the Madison Square Garden Concert Hall, New York, +playing, beside a number of his smaller pieces, his "Tragica" sonata, +which made, if anything, an even profounder impression than it had +made in Boston two years before. Probably the most signal of the +honours that came to him at this time was paid him when the Boston +Symphony Orchestra placed both his "Indian" suite and his first +concerto on the programme of its New York concert on January 23, 1896, +at the Metropolitan Opera House. + +[6] A single movement of the "Sonata Tragica," the third, was played +by MacDowell in Boston on March 18, 1892, at the last of the three +recitals which he gave in that season at Chickering Hall. + +In the spring of 1896 it was determined to found a department of music +at Columbia University, New York. This was made possible by a fund of +$150,000 given to the trustees by Mrs. Elizabeth Mary Ludow, with the +proviso that the income was to be applied in such ways as should "tend +more effectually to elevate the standard of musical instruction in the +United States, and to afford the most favourable opportunity for +acquiring musical instruction of the highest order." In May of that +year the professorship was offered to MacDowell, the committee who had +the appointment in charge announcing the consensus of their opinion to +be that he was "the greatest musical genius America has produced." +MacDowell, though he valued greatly the honour of his selection, +considered anxiously the advisability of accepting the post. He now +had more pupils than he could take, and his pecuniary circumstances +would not be improved by the change, save that a settled income would +be assured to him. This was of course a tempting prospect; on the +other hand, the task of organizing _de novo_ a new department in a +large university, and the curtailed freedom which the position would +necessitate, made him hesitate. But the assurance of an income free +from precariousness finally decided him in favour of acceptance; and +in the following autumn he moved from Boston to New York, and began +his duties at Columbia. + +That he undertook his labours there, from the start, in no casual or +perfunctory spirit, is made clear by the bare record of his activity. +For the first two years of his incumbency he had no assistant, carrying +all the work of his department on his own shoulders. He devoted from +eight to ten hours a week to lectures and class-work; and this +represented but a small proportion of the time and labour expended in +establishing the new department. The aim of the instruction was to be +twofold. "First, to teach music scientifically and technically, with a +view to training musicians who shall be competent to teach and to +compose. Second, to treat music historically and aesthetically as an +element of liberal culture." This plan involved five courses of study, +and a brief description of them will indicate the scope of the task +undertaken by MacDowell. + +There was to be, first, a "general musical course," consisting of +lectures and private reading, with illustrations. This course, while +"outlining the purely technical side of music," aimed at giving "a +general idea of music from its historical and aesthetic side," and it +treated of "the beginnings of music, the Greek modes and their +evolution, systems of notation, the Troubadours and Minnesingers, +counterpoint and fugue, beginnings of opera, the clavecinists, +beginnings of programme music, harmony, beginnings of the modern +orchestra, evolution of forms, the symphony and opera up to +Beethoven." A second course (this was not begun until the following +year) treated "of the development of forms, the song, romanticism, +instrumental development, and the composers for pianoforte, +revolutionary influences, the virtuoso, modern orchestration and +symphonic forms, the music-drama, impressionism versus absolute music, +color _versus_ form, the relationship of music to the other arts, +musical criticism." A third course treated of "general theory, +dictation, harmony, comprising chords and their mutual significance, +altered chords, suspensions, modulation, imitation, analysis, and the +commencement of composition in the smaller forms." A fourth course +comprised, in the first term, counterpoint, canon, choral figuration, +and fugue; in the second term, "free counterpoint, canon and fugue, +analysis, commencement of composition in the larger forms." The fifth +course treated of "free composition, analysis, instrumentation, +symphonic forms," and the study of "all the orchestral and other +instruments, considered collectively and individually," together with +demonstrations of their "technique, possibilities, and limitations." + +At the end of the second year an assistant was appointed--a gentleman +who had been a student in the department. To him were entrusted the +classes in rudimentary harmony, dictation, and chord-analysis: and to +this extent he relieved MacDowell until the latter had his sabbatical +vacation in 1902-03; he then took over the classes in strict +counterpoint; but all the more advanced courses were discontinued +until MacDowell's return. Even with an assistant, however, MacDowell +found his labours very far from being light. In his third year +(1898-99) he still gave five courses of two hours a week each, with +the exception of a single one-hour course. For these no less than +eighty-six students were registered; and in the following year, +fifty-two students were registered in one of the courses. In 1901-02 +he gave six courses: a general course in musical culture, for which he +had thirty-seven students; an advanced course in musical culture, for +which he had fourteen students; a course in counterpoint, twelve +students; in orchestration, twelve students; in practical composition, +thirteen students; in free compositions, two students. This continued +to be, in general, his work until he resigned in 1904. To these +labours he added the appalling drudgery of correcting examination +books and exercises--a task which he performed with unflagging +patience and invariable thoroughness. Some of his friends remember +seeing him at this particular labour, and they recall "the weary, +tired, though interested face; the patient trying-over and +annotating." In addition to his regular duties, he devoted every +Sunday morning to receiving students in the more advanced courses who +were invited to come to him for help in their composition and piano +work. He was, as his friend Hamlin Garland has said, "temperate in all +things but work--in that he was hopelessly prodigal." + +These facts are worth stating in detail; for it has been said that +MacDowell had no drudgery to perform at Columbia; that he had few +students, and that the burden of the teaching work was borne by his +assistant. The impression has gone abroad that he had little didactic +capacity, that he was disinclined toward and disqualified for +methodical work. It cannot, of course, be said that his inclinations +tended irresistibly toward pedagogy, or that he loved routine. Yet +that he had uncommon gifts as a teacher, that he was singularly +methodical in his manner of work, are facts that are beyond question. +His students have testified to the strikingly suggestive and +illuminating manner in which his instruction was imparted. His +lectures, which he wrote out in full, are remarkable for the amount of +sheer "brain-stuff" that was expended upon them. They are erudite, +accurate, and scholarly; they are original in thought, they are lucid +and stimulating in their presentation and interpretation of fact, and +they are often admirable in expression. They would reflect uncommon +credit upon a writer who had given his life to the critical, +historical, and philosophical study of music; as the work of a man who +had been primarily absorbed in making music, rather than in discussing +it, they are extraordinary. + +As conveying an idea of MacDowell's methods in the class-room I cannot +do better than quote from a vivid account of him in this aspect +written by one of his pupils, Miss J.S. Watson: + +"A crowd of noisy, expectant students sat in the lecture room +nervously eyeing the door and the clock by turns. The final +examination in course I of the Department of Music was in progress in +the back room, the door of which opened at intervals as one pupil came +out and another went in. The examination was oral and private, and +when the door closed behind me Professor MacDowell, who was standing +at the open window, turned with a smile and motioned me toward a +chair. In a pedagogic sense it was not a regular examination. There +was something beautifully human in the way the professor turned the +traditional stiff and starched catechism into a delightfully informal +chat, in which the faburden, the Netherland School, early notation, +the great clavichord players, suites and sonatas, formed the main +topics. The questions were put in such an easy, charming way that I +forgot to be frightened; forgot everything but the man who walked +rapidly about the room with his hands in his pockets and his head +tipped slightly to one side; who talked animatedly and looked intently +at the floor; but the explanations and suggestions were meant for me. +When I tripped upon the beginning of notation for instruments, he +looked up quickly and said, 'Better look that up again; that's +important.' + +"At the lectures Professor MacDowell's aim had been to emphasise those +things that had served to mark the bright spots in the growth and +advancement of music as an intelligible language. How well I recall my +impression on the occasion of my first visit to the lectures, and +afterwards! There was no evidence of an aesthetic side to the equipment +of the lecture room. At the end it was vast and glaringly white, and +except for an upright piano and a few chairs placed near the +lecturer's table the room was empty. Ten or twelve undergraduates, +youths of eighteen or twenty, and twenty or more special students and +auditors, chiefly women, were gathered here. The first lectures, +treating of the archaic beginnings of music, might have easily fallen +into a business-like recital of dates, but Professor MacDowell never +sank into the passionless routine of lecture giving. His were not the +pedantic discourses students link most often to university chairs. +They were beautifully illuminating talks, delivered with so much +freedom and such a rush of enthusiasm that one felt that the hour +never held all that wanted to be said, and the abundant knowledge, in +its longing to get out, kept spilling over into the to-morrows. + +"His ideas were not tied up in a manuscript, nor doled out from notes. +They came untrammelled from a wonderfully versatile mind, and were +illustrated with countless musical quotations and interlined with a +wealth of literary and historical references. There was no regular +textbook; some students carried a Rockstro or a Hunt, but the majority +depended upon the references made during the lectures. These were +numerous, and gave a broad view of this speculative period in musical +history. + +"Music was brought from behind the centuries and spread before us like +a huge map. Whatever meaning lay hidden under the musical theories of +the ancients was explained in a clear and conscientious way. Short +decisive sentences swept into every obscure corner, and from all sides +we saw reflected Professor MacDowell's resolute spirit and sincerity +of purpose.... + +"To illustrate [a point in connection with a discussion of popular +music], Professor MacDowell went to the piano to play 'A Hot Time in +the Old Town To-night.' After playing a few measures, he turned +abruptly toward the class, saying: 'Why, that isn't it! What is it I +am playing?' Someone answered 'Annie Rooney.' Facing us with a droll +smile, he asked if there was anyone present who could play 'A Hot +Time.' A dozen boys rushed forward and the one who gained the chair +dashed it off with the abandon of a four weeks' old freshman ... + +"The lectures on musical form were distinguished by many brilliant +demonstrations of MacDowell's genius. The ease and rapidity with which +he flashed his thoughts upon the blackboard were both inspiring and +bewildering to the student who must grope his way through notes before +he can reach an idea. If any were unwise enough to stop even for a +moment to catch these spontaneous thoughts as they flew along the +staff, they were very apt upon looking up to see them vanishing like +phantoms in a cloud of white chalk. At the same time he made +sarabandes, gavottes, minuets, chaconnes, passepieds, gigues, +polonaises and rondos dance across the piano in quick succession; and +his comments were as spirited as his playing. + +"Professor MacDowell's criticisms were clear and forceful, and filled +with many surprising and humorous touches. Of Bach he said, 'Bach +spoke in close, scientific, contrapuntal language. He was as emotional +and romantic as Chopin, Wagner or Tchaikovsky; his emotion was +expressed in the language of his time. Young women who say they adore +Bach play him like a sum in mathematics. They find a grim pleasure in +it, like biting on a sore tooth.' + +"He never approached the piano like a conqueror. He had a nervous way +of saying that he didn't know whether things would go, because he had +had no time to practise. After an apologetic little preamble, he would +sit down and play these rococo bits of trailing sound with fingers +dipped in lightning, fingers that flashed over the keys in perfect +evenness and with perfect sureness. + +"The closing lectures were in reality delightfully informal concerts +for which the class began to assemble as early as 8.30 in the morning. +By 9.30 every student would be in his chair, which he had dragged as +near to the piano as the early suburbanite would let him. Someone at +the window would say, 'Here he comes!' and, entering the room with a +huge bundle of music under one arm and his hat in his hand, MacDowell +would deposit them on the piano and turn to us with his gracious +smile. Then, instead of sitting down, he would continue to walk up and +down the room, his thoughts following, apparently, the pace set by his +energetic steps. He had an abundant word supply and his short, terse +sentences were easy to follow." + +This is not the picture of a man who was unqualified for his task, or +indifferent, rebellious, or inept in its performance; it is the +picture of a man of vital and electric temperament, with almost a +genius--certainly with an extraordinary gift--for teaching. His ideals +were lofty; he dreamed of a relationship between university +instruction and a liberal public culture which was not to be realised +in his time. He was anything but complacent; had he been less +intolerant in his hatred of unintelligent and indolent thought on the +subjects that were near his heart, his way would have been made far +easier. + +The results of his labours at the university, he finally came to feel, +did not warrant the expenditure of the vitality and time that he was +devoting to them. He was, in a sense, an anachronism in the position +in which he found himself. Both in his ideals and in his plans for +bringing about their fulfilment he had reached beyond his day. The +field was not yet ripe for his best efforts. It became clear to him +that he could not make his point of view operative in what he +conceived as the need for a reformation of conditions affecting his +work; and on January 18, 1904, after long and anxious deliberation and +discussion with his wife, he tendered his resignation as head of the +department. His attitude in the matter was grievously misunderstood +and misrepresented at the time, to his poignant distress and +harassment. The iron entered deeply into his soul: it was the +forerunner of tragedy. + +When he took up his work at Columbia his activity as a concert pianist +had, of course, to be virtually suspended. With the exception of two +short tours of a few weeks' each, he gave up his public appearances +altogether until the year of his sabbatical vacation (1902-03). In +December, 1902, he went on an extensive concert tour, which took him +as far west as San Francisco and occupied all of that winter. The +following spring and summer were spent Abroad, in England and on the +Continent. In London he appeared in concert, playing his second +concerto with the Philharmonic Society on May 14. He returned to +America in October, and resumed his work at Columbia. + +Meanwhile his composition had continued uninterruptedly. Indeed, the +eight years during which he held his Columbia professorship were, in a +creative sense, the most important of his life; for to this period +belong the "Sea Pieces" (op. 55), the two superb sonatas, the "Norse" +(op. 57) and the "Keltic" (op. 59), and the best of his songs--the +four of op. 56 ("Long Ago," "The Swan Bent Low to the Lily," "A Maid +Sings Light," "As the Gloaming Shadows Creep"), and the three of op. +58 ("Constancy," "Sunrise," "Merry Maiden Spring"): a product which +contains the finest flower of his inspiration, the quintessence of +his art.[7] He wrote also during these years the three songs of op. +60 ("Tyrant Love," "Fair Springtide," "To the Golden Rod"); the +"Fireside Tales" (op. 61); the "New England Idyls" (op. 62); numerous +part-songs, transcriptions, arrangements; and, finally, the greater +part of a suite for string orchestra which he never finished to his +satisfaction: in fact, nearly one quarter of the bulk of his entire +work was composed during these eight years. During this period, +moreover, was published all of the music hitherto unprinted which he +cared to preserve. + +[7] The only one of his works of equal calibre which does not, +strictly speaking, belong to this period is the set of "Woodland +Sketches"; these were composed during the last part of his stay in +Boston, and were published in the year (1896) of his removal to New +York. + +He had bought in 1896 a piece of property near the town of Peterboro, +in southern New Hampshire, consisting of a small farmhouse, some +out-buildings, fifteen acres of arable land, and about fifty acres of +forest. The buildings he consolidated and made over into a rambling +and comfortable dwelling-house; and in this rural "asyl" (as Wagner +would have called it), surrounded by the woods and hills that he +loved, he spent his summers from then until the end of his life. There +most of his later music was written, in a small log cabin which he +built, in the heart of the woods, for use as a workshop. Thus his +summers were devoted to composition, and his winters to the arduous +though absorbing labours of his professorship; in addition, he taught +in private a few classes for which he made time in that portion of the +day which was not taken up by his sessions at the university. During +his first two winters in New York he also served as conductor of the +Mendelssohn Glee Club, and he was for a time president of the +Manuscript Society, an association of American composers. Altogether, +it was a scheme of living which permitted him virtually no opportunity +for the rest and idleness which he imperatively needed. + +In New York the MacDowells' home was, during the first year, a house +in 88th Street, near Riverside Drive. Later they lived at the Majestic +Hotel; but during most of the Columbia years--from 1898 till +1902--they occupied an apartment at 96th Street and Central Park West. +After their return from the sabbatical vacation abroad they lived for +a year at the Westminster Hotel in Irving Place, and for a year in an +apartment house on upper Seventh Avenue, near Central Park. When that +was sold and torn down they returned to the Westminster; and there +MacDowell's last days were spent. + +After he left Columbia in 1904, he continued his private piano classes +(at some of which he gave free tuition to poor students in whose +talent he had confidence). He should have rested--should have ceased +both his teaching and his composing; for he was in a threatening +condition. Had he spent a year in a sanitarium, or had he stopped all +work completely and taken even a brief vacation, he might have averted +the collapse which was to come. In the spring of 1905 he began to +manifest alarming signs of nervous exhaustion. A summer in Peterboro +brought no improvement. That autumn his ailment was seen to be far +more deeply seated than had been supposed. There were indications of +an obscure brain lesion, baffling but sinister. Then began a very +gradual, progressive, and infinitely pathetic decline--the slow +beginning of the end. He suffered little pain, and until the last +months he preserved in an astonishing degree his physical well-being. +It was clear almost from the start that he was beyond the aid of +medical science, even the boldest and most expert. A disintegration of +the brain-tissues had begun--an affection to which specialists +hesitated to give a precise name, but which they recognized as +incurable. His mind became as that of a little child. He sat quietly, +day after day, in a chair by a window, smiling patiently from time to +time at those about him, turning the pages of a book of fairy tales +that seemed to give him a definite pleasure, and greeting with a +fugitive gleam of recognition certain of his more intimate friends. +Toward the last his physical condition became burdensome, and he sank +rapidly. At nine o'clock on the evening of January 23, 1908, in the +beginning of his forty-seventh year, he died at the Westminster Hotel, +New York, in the presence of the heroic woman who for almost a quarter +of a century had been his devoted companion, counsellor, helpmate, and +friend. After such simple services as would have pleased him, held at +St. George's Episcopal Church, on January 25, his body was taken to +Peterboro; and on the following day, a Sunday, he was buried in the +sight of many of his neighbours, who had followed in procession, on +foot, the passage of the body through the snow-covered lane from the +village. His grave is on an open hill-top, commanding one of the +spacious and beautiful views that he had loved. On a bronze tablet are +these lines of his own, which he had devised as a motto for his "From +a Log Cabin," the last music that he wrote: + + "A house of dreams untold, + It looks out over the whispering tree-tops + And faces the setting sun." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +PERSONAL TRAITS AND VIEWS + + +In his personal intercourse with the world, MacDowell, like so many +sensitive and gifted men, had the misfortune to give very often a +wholly false account of himself. In 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 tactful address which, even for men of gifts, is not without its +uses. It was a deficiency (if a deficiency it is) which undoubtedly +cost him much in a material sense. Had he possessed this serviceable +and lubricant quality it would often have helpfully smoothed his path. +For those who could penetrate behind the embarrassed and painful +reticence that was for him both an impediment and an unconscious +shield, he gave lavishly of the gifts of temperament and spirit which +were his; even that lack of ready address, of social adaptability and +adjustment, which it is possible to deplore in him, was, for those who +knew him and valued him, a 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, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his +shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted by a downright +bluntness, a deliberate frankness in matters of opinion in which his +convictions were involved; for his views were most positively held and +his convictions were often passionate in intensity, and he declared +them, upon occasion, with an utter absence of diplomacy, compromise, +or equivocation; with a superb but sometimes calamitous disregard of +his own interests. + +[Illustration: MACDOWELL IN 1892] + +Confident and positive to a fault in his adherence to and expression +of his principles, he was as morbidly dubious concerning his own +performances as he was uneasy under praise. He was tortured by doubts +of the value of each new work that he completed, after the flush and +ardour generated in its actual expression had passed; and he listened +to open praise of it in evident discomfort. I have a memory of him on +a certain occasion in a private house following a recital at which he +had played, almost for the first time, his then newly 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 door?" I said I did, and +led him through an inconspicuous doorway into a comparatively deserted +corridor behind the staircase. I procured for him, through the +strategic employment of a passing servant, something to eat, and we +staid in concealment there until the function had come to an end, and +his wife had begun to search for him. He was quite happy, consuming +his salad and beer behind the stairs and telling me in detail his +conception of certain of the figures of Celtic mythology which he had +had in mind while composing his sonata. + +To visitors at his house in Peterboro, he said one morning, on leaving +them, "I am going to the cabin to write some of my rotten melodies!" +He was sincerely distrustful concerning the worth of any composition +which he had finished; especially so, of course, concerning his more +youthful performances. He once sent a frantic telegram to Teresa +Carreno, upon learning from an announcement that she was to play his +early Concert Etude (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 invariably tormented by questionings and +misgivings after he had committed even his ripest work to his +publisher. Only the assurances of his wise and devoted wife at times +prevented him from recalling a completed work. Yet he was always +touched, delighted, and genuinely cheered by what he felt to be +sincere and thoughtful praise. To a writer who had published an +admiring article concerning some of his later music he wrote: + + "MY DEAR MR.----: + + "Your article was forwarded to me after all. I wish to thank you + for the warm-hearted and sympathetic enthusiasm which prompted + your writing it. While my outgivings have always been sincere, I + feel only too often their inadequacy to express my ideals; thus + what you speak of as accomplishment I fear is often but attempt. + Certainly your sympathy for my aims is most welcome and precious + to me, and I thank you again most heartily." + +Those who knew the man only through his music have thought of him as +wholly a dreamer and a recluse, a poet brooding in detachment, and +unfriendly to the pedestrian and homely things of the world. Nothing +could be further from the truth. He was overflowingly human, notably +full-blooded. On his "farm" (as he called it) at Peterboro he lived, +when he was not composing, a robust and vigorous outdoor life. He was +an ardent sportsman, and he spent much of his time in the woods and +fields, fishing, 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 have found issue in some of his most +intimate and affecting music--as in the "Woodland Sketches" and "New +England Idyls." He had an odd, naive tenderness for growing things and +for the creatures of the woods: it distressed him to have his wife +water some of the flowers in the garden without watering them all; and +though an excellent shot, he never brought down game without a +pang--it used to be said at Peterboro that for this reason he only +"pretended to hunt," despite his expertness as a marksman. + +In his intellectual interests and equipment he presented a striking +contrast to the brainlessness of the average musician. His tastes were +singularly varied and catholic. An omnivorous reader of poetry, an +inquisitive delver in the byways of mediaeval literature, an authority +in mythological detail, he was at the same time keenly interested in +contemporary affairs. 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 he fell captive to the new +and unaccustomed music of Fiona Macleod's exquisite prose and verse; +he wanted to dedicate his "New England Idyls" to the author of +"Pharais" and "From the Hills of Dream," and wrote for her permission; +but the identity of the mysterious author was then jealously guarded, +and his letter must have gone astray; for it was never answered. + +His erudition was extraordinary. He exemplified in a marked degree the +truth that the typical modern music-maker touches hands with the whole +body of culture and the humanities in a sense which would have been +simply incredible to Mozart or Schubert. He was, intellectually, one +of the most fully and brilliantly equipped composers in the history of +musical art. He had read widely and curiously 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 and original critic, and he had shrewd, cogent, and +clear-cut reasons for the particular views at which he had arrived; +whether one could always agree with them or not, they invariably +commanded respect. Yet his erudition was seldom displayed. One came +upon it unexpectedly in conversation with him, through the accident of +some reference or the discussion of some disputed point of fact. + +In his appearance MacDowell suggested a fusion of Scandinavian and +American types. His eyes, of a light and brilliant blue, were perhaps +his most salient feature. They betrayed his inextinguishable humour. +When he was amused--and he was seldom, in conversation, grave for +long--they lit up with an extraordinary animation; he had an +unconscious trick of blinking them rapidly once or twice, with the +effect of a fugitive twinkle, which was oddly infectious. His laugh, +too, was communicative; he did not often laugh aloud; his enjoyment +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, muscular, +finely shaped hands,--his general air of physical soundness and +vigour: all these combined to form an outer personality that was +strongly attractive. His movements were quick and decisive. To +strangers, even when he felt at ease, his manner was diffident, yet of +an indescribable, almost childlike, simplicity and charm. His voice in +speaking was low-pitched and subdued, like his laugh; in conversation, +when he was entirely himself, he could be brilliantly effective and +witty, and his mirth-loving propensities were irrepressible. + +His sense of humour, which was of true Celtic richness, was fluent and +inexhaustible. To an admirer who had affirmed in print that certain +imaginative felicities in some of the verse which he wrote for his +songs recalled at moments the phrasing of Whitman and Shakespeare, he +wrote: + + "I will confide in you that if, in the next world, I should happen + upon the wraiths of Shakespeare, Whitman, and Co., I would light + out without delay. Good heavens! I blush at the thought of it! A + header through a cloud would be the only thing.--Seriously, I was + deeply touched by your praise and wish I were more worthy." + +His pupil and friend, Mr. W.H. Humiston, recalls that, in going over +MacDowell's sketchbooks and manuscripts after his death, he found that +many of the manuscripts had been rewritten several times: "I would +find a movement begun and continued for half a page, then it would be +broken off suddenly, and a remark like this written at the end:--'Hand +organ to the rescue!'" + +I told him once that I had first heard his "To a Wild Rose" played by +a high-school girl, on a high-school piano, at a high-school +graduation festivity. "Well," he remarked, with his sudden +illumination, "I suppose she pulled it up by the roots!" Some 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 portion of most organs was enclosed +in a swell-box. Doubtless thinking also of a style of organ +performance which plays Schumann's _Traeumerei_ on the great organ +diapasons, he said it made him think of a hippopotamus wearing a +clover leaf in his mouth." + +A member of one of his classes at Columbia, finding some unoccupied +space on the page of his book after finishing his exercise, filled 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 corrections--all +except these bars of rests, which were enclosed in a red line and +marked: "This is the only correct passage in the exercise." + +He once observed in a lecture that "Bach differed in almost everything +from Handel, except that he was born the same year and was killed by +the same doctor." + +He was often sarcastic; but his was a sarcasm without sting or +rancour. Bitterness, indeed, was one of the few normal attributes +which he did not possess. Mr. Humiston tells of lunching with him +unexpectedly at a 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 was not a word of bitterness or reproach +toward anyone, but rather a deep feeling of disappointment that his +plans and ideals for the training and welfare of young artists should +have been so completely defeated." + +In his methods of work he was, like most composers of first-rate +quality, at the mercy of his inspiration. He never composed at the +piano, in the ordinary meaning of the phrase. That is to say, he never +sat down to the piano with the idea that he wanted to compose a song +or a piano piece. But sometime, when he might be improvising, as he +was fond of doing 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 involved, made it necessary for him to let days +and weeks slip by with no creative work accomplished. Yet he always +tried to write each day a few bars of music. Often in this way he +evolved a theme for which he afterward found a use. In looking over a +sketch-book in the summer he would run across something he liked, and +the idea would expand into a matured work. + +His sketch-books are full of all kinds of random and fugitive +material--half-finished fugues, canons, piano pieces, songs, single +themes. Undoubtedly this habit of work had its value when he came to +the leisurely months of summer; for he did not then have to go through +a period of technical "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 evening when, no matter how late it might be, he +sat quietly with his wife, reading or talking, smoking, and, in +earlier days, enjoying a glass of beer and some food. His love of +reading was a godsend to him when the waters were more than usually +troubled and his brain was in a whirl. + +In the actual work of composition he was elaborately meticulous--not +often to the extent of changing an original plan, but in minor +details; he never ceased working on a score until the music was out of +his hands, or entirely put aside. Sometimes he tried over a few +measures on 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 out. For this reason, much in his printed music is +marked differently from the way he actually played it in concert. He +never, in performance, changed a note, save in a few of the earlier +pieces; but in details of expression he often departed widely from the +printed directions. + +He was always profoundly absorbed when at work, though not to the +extent of being able to compose amid noise or disturbance. He needed +to isolate himself as much as possible; although, when it could not be +avoided, he contrived to work effectively under obstructive +conditions; the Largo of the "Sonata Tragica," for example, was +written in Boston when he was harassed by drudgery and care. During +the earlier days at Peterboro he composed in a music room which 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 he always had at night. +He kept a piano in the music room as well as at the log cabin; so if +he felt like working in the evening he could do so; and when he was +especially engrossed he often worked into the small hours. His +unselfishness made it easy for his wife, when she deemed a change and +rest essential, to make the excuse that _she_ needed it. After a +preliminary protest he would usually give in, and they would leave +Peterboro for a few days' excursion. + +He knew discouragement in an extreme form. Many weeks, even months, +had to pass before his discontent over the last child of his +imagination would become normal. Particularly was this so with the +larger works; though each one was started in a fever of inspiration, a +longing 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 +in his future music that he was always going to do his "really good +work," and he longed ardently for leisure and freedom from care, so +that, as he once bitterly said, he would not have to press into a +small piano piece material enough to make a movement of a symphony. + +His preferences in the matter of his own music were not very definite. +In 1903, when he had finished all that he was to write, he expressed a +preference for the "Dirge" from the "Indian" suite above anything that +he had composed. "Of all my music," he confessed at this time, "the +'Dirge' in the 'Indian' suite pleases me most. It affects me deeply +and did when I was writing it. In it an Indian woman laments the death +of her son; but to me, 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 the "Tragica" +and certain parts of the "Norse." He felt concerning the "Keltic" that +there was hardly a bar in it that he wanted changed, that he had +scarcely ever written any thing so rounded, so complete, in which the +joining was so invisible. He played it _con amore_, and it grew to be +part of himself as no other of his works ever did. Technically, it was +never hard for him, whereas he found the "Eroica" exhausting, +physically and mentally. + +Of the smaller works he preferred the "Sea Pieces," as a whole, above +all the others; yet there were single things in each of the other sets +for which he cared perhaps as much. Of the "Sea 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 for "In a German Forest," which always +seemed to bring back the Frankfort days to his memory. Of the "New +England Idyls," his favorites were: "In Deep Woods," "Mid-Winter," +"From a Log Cabin." + +In his composition he was growing away from piano work,--he felt that +the future must mean larger, probably orchestral, forms, for him, and +his dream of an ultimate leisure was a dream for which his friends can +be thankful. He did not end with despair at his heart that the +distracting work, the yearly drudgery, were to go on forever. + +His preferences in music were governed by the independence which +characterised his intellectual judgments. Of the moderns, Wagner was +his god; for Liszt he had an unbounded admiration, though he detected +the showman, the mere juggler, in him; Tchaikovsky 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 request for +permission to inscribe the first of these to his eminent contemporary, +he received from Grieg the following delectable letter--one of the +Norwegian's very few attempts at English composition (I quote it +verbatim; the spelling is Grieg's):-- + + COPENHAGEN, 26/10/99. + Hotel King of Denmark. + + MY DEAR SIR! + + Will you remit me in bad English to express my best thanks for + your kind letter and for the sympathi you feel for my music. Of + course it will be a great honor and pleasure for me to accept your + dedication. + + Some years ago I thought it possible to shake hands with you in + your own country. But unfortunately my delicat health does not + seem to agree. At all events, if we are not to meet, I am glad to + read in the papers of your artistical success in Amerika. + + With my best wishes, + + I am, dear Sir, + + Yours very truly, + + EDVARD GRIEG. + +[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM GRIEG TO MACDOWELL, +ACCEPTING THE DEDICATION OF THE "NORSE" SONATA. ONE OF GRIEG'S RARE +ATTEMPTS AT ENGLISH COMPOSITION (SEE PAGE 73)] + +I may quote also, in this place, because of its unusual interest, a +letter written (in German) by Grieg to Mrs. MacDowell when he learned +of her husband's collapse:-- + + CHRISTIANIA, + December 14, 1905. + + DEAR MADAM: + + The news of MacDowell's serious illness has deeply affected me. + Permit me therefore to express to you my own and my wife's + sincerest sympathy for you. I am a great admirer of MacDowell's + Muse, and would regard it as a severe blow if his best creative + period should be so hastily broken off. From all that I hear of + your husband, his qualities as a man are as remarkable as his + qualities as an artist. He is a complete Personality, with an + unusually sympathetic and sensitive nervous system. Such a + temperament gives 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 Kuenstler_] 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 he would be no artist. He believes and + hopes in the triumph of the good and the beautiful. He trusts in + his lucky star till his last breath. And you, the wife of a highly + gifted artist, will not and must not lose hope! In similar cases, + happily, one often witnesses a seemingly inexplicable recovery. If + it can give MacDowell a moment's cheer, say to him that he has in + distant Norway a warm and understanding friend who feels for him, + and wishes from his heart that for him, as for you, better times + may soon come. + + With best greeting to you both, + + Your respectful + + EDVARD GRIEG. + +MacDowell's feeling in regard to Strauss, whom he considered to have +developed what he called the "suggestive" (delineative) power of music +at the expense of its finer potentialities, is indicated in a lecture +which he prepared on the subject of "Suggestion in Music." "'Thus +Spake Zarathustra,'" he wrote, "may be considered the apotheosis of +this power of suggestion in tonal 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 +tone-colour. The upward sweep of the music to the highest regions of +light has something splendrous about it; and yet I remember once +hearing in London a song sung in the street at night that seemed to me +to contain a truer germ of music."--From which it will be seen that +there were limits to the aesthetic sympathy of even so liberal and +divining an appreciator as MacDowell. + +The modern Frenchmen he knew scarcely at all. Some of d'Indy's earlier +music he had heard and admired: but that he would have cared for such +a score as Debussy's "La Mer" I very much doubt. I remember his +amusement over 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'Indy, Debussy, and Ravel; his instincts and +temperament led him into a wholly different region of expression. He +was a prophet of modernity; but it was a modernity that he alone +exemplifies: it has no exact parallel. + +Concerning the classics he had his own views. Of Bach he wrote that he +believed him to have accomplished his work as "one of the world's +mightiest tone-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 foundation as those of the Rondo and Sonata Form, and I +find it impossible to imagine their ever having been a spur, an +incentive, to poetic musical speech." + +Of Mozart he wrote: "It is impossible to forget the fact that in his +piano works he was first and foremost a piano virtuoso, a child +prodigy: of whom filigree work (we cannot call this Orientalism, for +it was more or less of German pattern, traced from the _fioriture_ of +the Italian opera singer) was expected by the public for which his +sonatas were written.... We need freshness and sincerity 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 of the author of 'The Magic +Flute' and 'Don Giovanni,' or of any composer with pretensions to more +than mediocre talent. They are written in a style of flashy +harpsichord virtuosity such as Liszt in his most despised moments +never descended to. Yet I am well aware that this statement would be +dismissed as either absurd or heretical, according to the point of +view of the particular objector." + +Of Mendelssohn he said: "Mendelssohn professed to be an 'absolutist' +in music. As a matter of fact, he stands on the same ground that Liszt +and Berlioz did; for almost everything he wrote, even to the smallest +piano piece, he furnished with an explanatory title.... Formalist +though he was, his work often exhibits eccentricities of form--as, for +instance, in the Scotch Symphony, where, in the so-called 'exposition' +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 can be +found the germs of most of the pianistic innovations that are usually +identified with other composers--for instance, the manner of +enveloping the melody with runs, the discovery of which has been +ascribed to Thalberg, but which we find in Mendelssohn's first +Prelude, written in 1833. The interlocking passages which have become +so prevalent in modern music we find in his compositions dating from +1835." + +Of Schumann he said happily: "His music is not avowed programme-music; +neither is it, as was much of Schubert's, pure delight in beautiful +sound. It did not break through formalism by sheer violence of +emotion, as did Beethoven'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 character until perhaps +when, awakened from his dream, he naively wonders what they may have +meant--you remember that he added titles to his music after it was +composed. He put his dreams in music and guessed their meaning +afterward." + +Of Liszt and Chopin: "To all of this new, strange music [the piano +music of the Romantics] Liszt and Chopin added the wonderful tracery +of Orientalism. The difference between these two is, that with Chopin +this tracery developed poetic thought as with a thin gauze; whereas +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 in the +simplest piano piece of to-day with the awkward and gargoyle-like +figuration of Beethoven and his predecessors. We may justly attribute +this to Liszt rather than to Chopin, whose nocturne embellishments are +but first cousins to those of the Englishman, John Field." + +Of Wagner: "His music-dramas, shorn of the fetters of the actual +spoken word, emancipated from the materialism of acting, painting, and +furniture, must be considered the greatest achievement in our art." + +Concerning Form in music, he observed: "If by the word 'form' our +purists meant the most poignant expression of poetic thought in music, +if they meant by this term the art of arranging musical sounds so that +they constituted the most telling presentation of a musical idea, I +should have nothing to say. But as it is, the word in almost its +invariable use by theorists stands for what are called 'stoutly-built +periods,' 'subsidiary themes' and the like, a happy combination of +which in certain prescribed keys is supposed to constitute good form. +Such a principle, inherited from the necessities and fashions of the +dance, and changing from time to time, is surely not worthy of the +strange worship it has received. In their eagerness to press this +great revolutionist [Beethoven] into their own ranks in the fight 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, +the poetic thought, that comes to us like a homing bird from out of +the mystery of the blue sky--we put this confiding stranger +straightway into that iron bed: the 'sonata-form'--or perhaps even the +'third-rondo form,' for we have quite an assortment; and should the +idea survive, and grow, and become too large for the bed, and if we +have grown to love it too much to cut off its feet and thus _make_ it +fit (as did that old robber of Attica), why then we run the risk of +having some wiseacre say, as is said of Chopin: 'Yes--but he is weak +in sonata-form'! ... Form should be nothing more than a synonym for +_coherence_. No idea, whether great or small, can find utterance +without form; but that form will be inherent in the idea, and there +will be as many forms as there are adequately expressed ideas in the +world." + +Concerning programme-music he wrote at length. "In my opinion," he +says in one of his lectures, "the battle over what music can express +and what it cannot express has been carried on wrong lines. We are +always referred back to language as actually expressing an idea, when, +as a matter of fact, language expresses nothing but that which its +vital parallel means of expression, gesture and facial expression, +permit it to express. Words mean nothing whatsoever in themselves; the +same words in different languages mean wholly different things; for +written words are mere symbols, and no more express things or ideas +than any marks on paper would. Yet language is forever striving to +emulate music by actually expressing something, 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 detract, I think, from the high +mission of music: which, as I conceive, is neither to be an agent for +expressing material things; nor to utter pretty sounds to amuse the +ear; nor a sensuous excitant to fire the blood, or a sedative to lull +the senses: it is a _language_, but a language of the intangible, a +kind of soul-language. It appeals directly to the _Seelenzustaende_ it +springs from, for it is the natural expression of it, rather than, +like words, a translation of it into set stereotyped symbols which may +or may not be accepted for what they were intended to denote by the +writer"--a _credo_ which sums up in fairly complete form his theory of +music-making, whatever validity it may have as a philosophical +generalisation. + +In regard to the sadly vexed question of musical nationalism, +especially in its relation to America, his position was definite and +positive. His views on this 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 on "Folk-Music," +he pays his respects to Dvorak's "New World" symphony, and touches +upon his own attitude toward the case as exemplified in his "Indian" +suite: + +"A man is generally something different from the clothes he wears or +the business he is occupied with; but when we do see a man identified +with his clothes we think but little of him. And so it is with music. +So-called Russian, Bohemian, or any other purely national music has no +place in art, for its characteristics may be duplicated by anyone who +takes the fancy to do so. On the other hand, the vital element of +music--personality--stands alone. We have seen the Viennese Strauss +family adopting the cross rhythms of the Spanish--or, to be more +accurate, the Moorish or Arab--school of art. Moszkowski the Pole +writes Spanish dances. Cowen in England writes a Scandinavian +Symphony. Grieg the Norwegian writes Arabian music; and, to cap the +climax, we have here in America been offered a pattern for an +'American' national musical costume 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 'creating' a national music to which I have alluded are childish. +No: before a people can find a musical writer to echo its genius it +must first possess men who truly represent it--that is to say, men +who, being part of the people, love the country for itself: men who +put into their music what the nation has put into its life; and in the +case of America it needs above all, both on the part of the public and +on the part of the writer, absolute freedom from the restraint that an +almost unlimited deference to European thought and prejudice has +imposed upon us. Masquerading in the so-called nationalism of Negro +clothes cut in Bohemia will not help us. What we must arrive at is the +youthful optimistic vitality and the undaunted tenacity of spirit that +characterizes the American man. This is what I hope to see echoed in +American music." + +Of MacDowell as a pianist, Mr. Henry T. Finck, who had known him in +this capacity almost from the beginning of his career in America, has +written for me his impressions, and I shall quote them, rather than +any of my own; since I had comparatively few opportunities to hear him +display, at his best, the full measure of his ability: + +"As he never felt quite sure," writes Mr. Finck, "that what he was +composing was worth while, so, in the matter of playing in public, he +was so self-distrustful that when he came on the stage and sat down on +the piano stool he hung his head and looked a good deal like a +school-boy detected in the act of doing something he ought not to do. + +"Often though I was with him--sometimes a week at a time in +Peterboro--I never could persuade him to play for me. I once asked +Paderewski to play for me his new set of songs, and he promptly did +so. But MacDowell always was 'out of practice,' or had some other +excuse, generally a witticism or bit of sarcasm at his own expense. I +am sorry now that I did not 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 tete-a-tete 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 me a better appreciation +of his skill as an interpreter than I could have got in a public hall +with an audience to distract his attention. One afternoon I called on +Saint-Saens at his hotel after one of his concerts in New York. +Talking about it, he sat down at the piano, ran over his _Valse +Canariote_, and said: 'That's the way I _ought_ to have played it!' + +"MacDowell was quite right in saying that he was out of practice; he +generally was, his duties as professor allowing him little time for +technical exercising; 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 needless to say, were always +honourable! He never played any of those show pieces which help along +a pianist, but confined himself to the best he could find. + +"Usually the first half of a recital was devoted to the classical and +romantic masters, the second to his own compositions. Beethoven, +Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, 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 composers was both objective and +subjective; there was no distortion or exaggeration, yet one could not +mistake the fact that it was MacDowell who was playing it. + +"The expression, 'he played like a composer,' is often used to hint +that the technic was not that of a virtuoso. In this sense MacDowell +did not play like a composer; his technical skill was equal to +everything he played, though never obtrusive. In another sense he did +play 'like a composer,' especially when interpreting his own pieces; +that 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 MacDowell did in playing his 'Keltic' sonata. In this combination +of feminine tenderness with masculine strength he was, as in his +creative gift, a man of genius. After one of his concerts I wrote in +the glow of enthusiasm that I would rather hear him than any pianist +in the field excepting Paderewski; that utterance I never saw reason +to modify." + +For an interesting and closely observed description of MacDowell's +technical peculiarities as a piano player I am indebted to his friend +and pupil, Mr. T.P. Currier, who had followed MacDowell's career as a +pianist from the time of his first public appearance in Boston: + +"[His finger velocity] was at that time [in 1888] the most striking +characteristic of his playing," says Mr. Currier. "For him, too, it +was a mere bagatelle. He took to prestissimo like a duck to water. He +could, in fact, 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. This extraordinary velocity, acquired in the +Paris Conservatory, and from his friend and teacher, Carl Heymann, of +Frankfort, invariably set his listeners agape, and was always one of +the chief sensations at his concerts. + +"But for this finger speeding and for his other technical acquirements +as well, MacDowell cared little, except as they furthered his one +absorbing aim. He was heart and soul a composer, and to be able to +play his own music as he heard it in his inner ear was his single spur +to practice. 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 passages only when they could be made to +suggest what he wanted them to suggest in his own colour-scheme. With +his peculiar touch and facility at command, he rejoiced in turning +such passages into streams and swirls of tone, marked with strong +accents and coloured with vivid, dynamic contrasts. + +"That his passage playing rarely sounded clean and pure--like that of +a Rosenthal--was due not only to his musical predilections, but to his +hand formation as well. His hand was broad and rather thick-set, and +tremendously muscular. It would not bend back at the knuckles; and the +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 very close, often overlapping, touch, and to maintain extremely +rapid tempi in legato or staccato with perfect ease and little +fatigue. With this combination of velocity and close touch, it was a +slight matter to produce those pianistic effects which were especially +dear to him. + +"MacDowell's finger development has been thus dwelt upon, because it +was, as has been said, the feature of his technic which immediately +surprised and captivated his hearers. Less noticeable was his wrist +and octave work. But his chord playing, though also relatively +unattractive, was even in those early days almost as uncommon 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 pianist who has visited these +shores in recent years. His tone in chord playing, it is true, was +often harsh, and this fault also appeared in his melodic delivery. But +in both cases any unmusical effect was so greatly overbalanced by many +rare and beautiful qualities of tone production, that it was easily +forgiven and forgotten. + +"Wonderful tone blending in finger passages; a peculiarly crisp, yet +veiled staccato; chord playing extraordinary in variety,--tender, +mysterious, sinister, heroic; a curiously unconventional yet effective +melodic delivery; playing replete with power, vitality, and dramatic +significance, always 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 for his genius for +composition, he would, without doubt, have been known as a brilliant +and forceful interpreter of the greatest piano literature. But his +compositional bent turned him completely away from mere piano playing. +He was a composer-pianist, and as such he ever desired to be +regarded." + +[Illustration: THE HOUSE AT PETERBORO, NEW HAMPSHIRE, WHERE MACDOWELL +SPENT HIS SUMMERS] + +As a pianist, as in all other matters touching his own capacities, he +was often tortured by doubts concerning the effect of his +performances. "I shall never forget," recalls his wife, "the first +time he played it [the "Eroica" sonata] in Boston. We all thought he +did it wonderfully. But when I went around to the green-room door 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 unnecessary suffering, +which was yet so real and intense. In a short time he was more +himself, and naively admitted that he had played three movements well, +but had been a 'd---- fool in one.' I grew to be very used to this as +the years went on, for he could not help emphasising to himself what +he did badly, and ignoring the good." + +He left few uncompleted works. There are among his manuscripts three +movements of a symphony, two movements of a suite for string +orchestra, a suite for violin and piano, some songs and piano pieces, +and a large number of sketches. He had schemes for a music-drama on an +Arthurian subject, and sketched a single act of it. He had 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 +Grail frescoes in the Boston Public Library. But he had determined to +write his own text: and the prospective labour of this, made more +formidable by his restricted leisure, finally discouraged him, and he +abandoned the project. Five years before his death he destroyed the +sketches that he had made; only a few fragments remain. + +A rare and admirable man!--a man who would have been a remarkable +personality if he had not written a note of music. His faults--and he +was far from being a paragon--were never petty or contemptible: they +were truly the defects of his qualities--of his honesty, his courage, +his passionate and often reckless zeal in the promotion of what he +believed to be sound and fine in art and in life. 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 hopeful of his country and of its artistic +future, but he could not brook the thought of patriotism used as a +cloak to cover mediocrity in art.... He was one who worked steadily +and courageously in the face of discouragement; who never courted by +trickery or device the favour of the public; who never fawned upon +those who might help him; who in his art kept himself pure and +unspotted." + + "O that so many pitchers of rough clay + Should prosper and the porcelain break in two!" + + + + +THE MUSIC-MAKER + +CHAPTER III + +HIS ART AND ITS METHODS + + +Among those music-makers of to-day who are both pre-eminent and +representative the note of sincere romance is infrequently sounded. +The fact must be obvious to the most casual observer of musical art in +its contemporary development. The significant work of the most +considerable musicians of our time--of Strauss, Debussy, Loeffler, +d'Indy--has few essentially romantic characteristics. It is necessary +to distinguish between that fatuous Romanticism of which Mr. Ernest +Newman has given an unequalled definition: the Romanticism which +expended itself in the fabrication of a pasteboard world of "gloomy +forests, enchanted castles, impossible maidens, and the obsolete +profession of magic," and that other and imperishable Spirit of +Romance whose infrequent embodiment in modern music I have remarked. +_That_ is a romance in no wise divorced from reality--is, in fact, but +reality diviningly perceived; if it uses the old Romanticistic +properties, it uses them not because of any inherent validity which +they possess, but because they may at times be made to serve as +symbols. It deals in a truth that is no less authentic because it is +conveyed in terms of a beauty that may often be in the last degree +incalculable and aerial. + +It is to its persistent embodiment of this valid spirit of romance +that MacDowell's work owes its final and particular distinction. I +know of no composer who has displayed a like sensitiveness to the +finer stuff of romance. He has chosen more than occasionally to +employ, in the accomplishment of his purposes, what seems at first to +be precisely the magical apparatus so necessary to the older +Romanticism. Dryads and elves are his intimate companions, and he +dwells at times under fairy boughs and in enchanted woods; but for +him, as for the poets of the Celtic tradition, these things are but +the manifest images of an interior passion and delight. Seen in the +transfiguring mirror of his music, the moods and events of the natural +world, and of the drama that plays incessantly in the hearts of men, +are vivified into shapes and designs of irresistible beauty and +appeal. He is of those quickened ministers of beauty who attest for us +the reality of that changeless and timeless loveliness which the +visible world of the senses and the invisible world of the imagination +are ceaselessly revealing to the simple of heart, the dream-filled, +and the unwise. + +MacDowell presents throughout the entire body of his work the +noteworthy spectacle of a radical without extravagance, a musician at +once in accord with, and detached from, the dominant artistic +movement of his day. The observation is more a definition than an +encomium. He is a radical in that, to his sense, music is nothing if +not articulate. Wagner's luminous phrase, "the fertilisation of music +by poetry," would have implied for him no mere aesthetic abstraction, +but an intimate and ever-present ideal. He was a musician, yet he +looked out upon the visible world and inward upon the world of the +emotions through the transforming eyes of the poet. He would have +none of a formal and merely decorative beauty--a beauty serving no +expressional need of the heart or the imagination. In this ultimate +sense he is to be regarded as a realist--a realist with the +romantic's vision, the romantic's preoccupation; and yet he is as +alien to the frequently unleavened literalism of Richard Strauss as +he is to the academic ideal. Though he conceives the prime mission of +music to be interpretive, he insists no less emphatically that, in +its function as an expressional instrument, it shall concern itself +with essences and impressions, and not at all with transcriptions. +His standpoint is, in the last analysis, that of the poet rather than +of the typical musician: the standpoint of the poet intent mainly +upon a vivid embodiment of the quintessence of personal vision and +emotion, who has elected to utter that truth and that emotion in +terms of musical beauty. One is, indeed, almost tempted to say that +he is paramountly a poet, to whom the supplementary gift of musical +speech has been extravagantly vouchsafed. + +He is a realist, as I have said--applying the term in that larger +sense which denotes the transmutation of life into visible or audible +form, and which implicates Beethoven as well as Wagner, Schumann as +well as Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Debussy as well as Strauss: all those +in whom the desire for intelligible utterance coexists with, or +supersedes, the impulse toward perfected design. But if MacDowell's +method of transmutation is not the method of Strauss, neither is it +the method of Schumann, or of Debussy. He occupies a middle ground +between the undaunted literalism of the Munich tone-poet and the +sentimental posturings into which the romanticism of Schumann so +frequently declined. It is impossible to conceive him attempting the +musical exposition of such themes as kindled the imagination of +Strauss when he wrought out his "Heldenleben," "Zarathustra," and +"Till Eulenspiegel"; nor has he any appreciable affinity with the +prismatic subtleties of the younger French school: so that there is +little in the accent of his musical speech to remind one of the +representative voices of modernity. + +Though he has avoided shackling his music to a detailed programme, he +has never very seriously espoused the sophistical compromise which +concedes the legitimacy of programme-music provided it speaks as +potently to one who does not know the subject-matter as to one who +does. The bulk of his music no more discloses its full measure of +beauty and eloquence to one who is in ignorance of its poetic basis +than would Wagner's "Faust" overture, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and +Juliet," or Debussy's "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune." Its appeal is +conditioned upon an understanding of the basis of drama and emotional +crisis upon which the musician has built; and in much of his music he +has frankly recognized this fact, and has printed at the beginning of +such works as the "Idyls" and "Poems" after Goethe and Heine, the +"Norse" and "Keltic" sonatas, the "Sea Pieces," and the "New England +Idyls," the fragment of verse or legend or meditation which has served +as the particular stimulus of his inspiration; while in other works +he has contented himself with the suggestion of a mood or subject +embodied in his title, as, for example, in his "Woodland +Sketches,"--"To a Wild Rose," "Will o' the Wisp," "At an Old Trysting +Place," "In Autumn," "From an Indian Lodge," "To a Water-Lily," "A +Deserted Farm." That he has been tempted, however, in the direction of +the compromise to which I have alluded, is evident from the fact that +although his symphonic poem "Lancelot and Elaine" is built upon the +frame of an extremely definite sequence of events,--such as Lancelot's +downfall in the tournament, his return to the court, Guinevere's +casting away of the trophies, the approach of the barge bearing +Elaine's body, and Lancelot's reverie by the river bank,--he gives in +the published score no hint whatever of the particular phases of that +moving chronicle of passion and tragedy which he has so faithfully +striven to represent. "I would never have insisted," he wrote in 1899, +"that this symphonic poem need mean 'Lancelot and Elaine' to everyone. +It did to me, however, and in the hope that my artistic enjoyment +might be shared by others, I added the title to my music." + +But if MacDowell displayed at times the usual inconsistency of the +modern tone-poet in his attitude toward the whole subject of +programme-music,[8] the tendency was neither a persistent nor +determined one; and he was, as I have noted, even less disposed toward +the frankly literal methods of which Strauss and his followers are +such invincible exponents. His nearest approach to such diverting +expedients as the bleating sheep and the exhilarating wind-machine of +"Don Quixote" is in the denotement of the line: + + "And like a thunderbolt he falls" + +in his graphic paraphrase of Tennyson's poem, "The Eagle"--an +indulgence which the most exigent champion of programmatic reserve +would probably condone. In the main, MacDowell's predilection for what +he chose to call "suggestive" music finds expression in such continent +symbolism as he employs in those elastically wrought tone-poems, brief +or vigorously sustained, in which he sets forth a poetic concept with +memorable vividness--in such things as his terse though astonishingly +eloquent apostrophe "To a Wandering Iceberg," and his "In Mid-Ocean," +from the "Sea Pieces"; in "To a Water-lily," from the "Woodland +Sketches"; in the "Winter" and "In Deep Woods" from the "New England +Idyls"; in the "Marionettes" ("Soubrette," "Lover," "Witch," "Clown," +"Villain," "Sweetheart"); in the Raff-like orchestral suite, op. 42 +("In a Haunted Forest," "Summer Idyll," "The Shepherdess' Song," +"Forest Spirits"), and in the later and far more important "Indian" +suite for orchestra ("Legend," "Love Song," "In War-time," "Dirge," +"Village Festival"). + +[8] That MacDowell came later to realise the disadvantages, no less +than the inconsistency, of writing programme-music based upon a +detailed and definite programme and then withholding the programme, is +indicated by this passage from a lecture on Beethoven which he +delivered at Columbia: "If it [Beethoven's music] is absolute music, +according to the accepted meaning of the term, either it must be +beautiful music in itself,--that is, composed of beautiful sounds,--or +its excuse for _not_ being beautiful must rest upon its power of +expressing emotions and ideas that demand other than 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 music' by the modern formalists"--a comment which would +apply almost word for word, with a change of names and titles, to a +certain tumultuous and "unbeautiful" passage in MacDowell's "Lancelot +and Elaine." This passage is intended to express the rage and jealousy +of Guinevere; but MacDowell has given no indication of this fact in +his score, and only occasionally does the information find its way +into the programme-books. Yet in his own copy of the score he wrote a +complete and detailed key to the significance of the music at every +point. Such are the ways of the musical realist! + +He was, in an extraordinarily complete sense, a celebrant of the +natural world. His imagination was enslaved by the miraculous pageant +of the visible earth, and he sought tirelessly to transfix some moment +of its wonder or its splendour or its terror in permanent images of +tone. The melancholy beauty of the autumn woods, the loveliness of +quiet waters under fading skies, the sapphire and emerald glories, or +the ominous chantings, of the sea, the benign and mysterious majesty +of summer stars, the lyric sweetness of a meadow: these things urged +him to musical transcripts, notations of loving tenderness and +sincerity. His music is redolent of the breath and odour of woodland +places, of lanes and moors and gardens; or it is saturated with salt +spray; or it communicates the incommunicable in its voicing of that +indefinable and evanescent sense of association which is evoked by +certain aspects, certain phases, of the outer world--that sudden +emotion of things past and irrecoverable which may cling about a field +at sunset, or a quiet street at dusk, or a sudden intimation of spring +in the scent of lilacs. + +But although such themes as he loved to dwell upon in his celebration +of the magic of the natural world were very precious to his +imagination, the human spectacle held for him, from the first, an +emotion scarcely less swift and abundant. His scope is comprehensive: +he can voice the archest gaiety, a naive and charming humour, as in +the "Marionettes" and in the songs "From an Old Garden"; there is +passion in the symphonic poems and in many of the songs; while in the +sonatas and in the "Indian" suite the tragic note is struck with +impressive and indubitable authority. + +Of the specifically musical traits in which MacDowell exhibits the +tendencies and preferences which underlie his art, one must begin by +saying that his distinguishing quality--that which puts so +unmistakable a stamp upon his work--eludes precise definition. His +tone is unmistakable. Its chief possession is a certain clarity and +directness which is apparent no less in moments of great stress and +complexity of emotion than in passages of simpler and slighter +content. His style has little of the torrential rhetoric, the +unbridled gusto and exuberance of Strauss, though it owns something of +his forthright quality; nor has it any of Debussy's withdrawals. One +thinks, as a discerning commentator has observed, of the "broad +Shakespearian daylight" of Fitzgerald's fine phrase as being not +inapplicable to the atmosphere of MacDowell's writing. He has few +reservations, and he shows small liking for recondite effects of +harmonic colour, for the wavering melodic line--which is far from +implying that he is ever merely obvious or banal: that he never is. +His clarity, his directness, find issue in an order of expression at +once lucid and distinguished, at once spontaneous and expressive. It +is difficult to recall, in any example of his maturer work, a single +passage that is not touched with a measure of beauty and character. He +had, of course, his period of crude experimentation, his days of +discipleship. In his earlier writing there is not a little that is +unworthy of him: much in which one seeks vainly for that note of +distinction and personality which sounds so constantly throughout the +finer body of his work. But in that considerable portion of his output +which is genuinely representative--say from his opus 45 onward--he +sustains his art upon a noteworthy level of fineness and strength. + +The range of his expressional gamut is striking. One is at a loss to +say whether he is happier in emotional moments of weighty +significance,--as in many pages of the sonatas and some of the "Sea +Pieces,"--or in such cameo-like performances as the "Woodland +Sketches," certain of the "Marionettes,"[9] and the exquisite song +group, "From an Old Garden," in which he attains an order of delicate +eloquence difficult to associate with the mind which shaped the heroic +ardours of the "Norse" and "Keltic" sonatas. His capacity for forceful +utterance is remarkable. Only in certain pages of Strauss is there +anything in contemporary music which compares, for superb virility, +dynamic power, and sweep of line, with the opening of the "Keltic" +sonata. He has, moreover, a remarkable gift for compact expression. +Time and again he astonishes by his ability to charge a composition of +the briefest span with an emotional or dramatic content of large and +far-reaching significance. His "To the Sea,"[10] for example, is but +thirty-one bars long; yet within this limited frame he has confined a +tone-picture which for breadth of conception and concentrated +splendour of effect is paralleled in the contemporary literature of +the piano only by himself. Consider, also, the "Epilogue" in the +revised version of the "Marionettes." The piece comprises only a score +of measures; yet within it the thought of the composer traverses a +world of philosophical meditation: here is reflected the mood of one +who looks with grave tenderness across the tragi-comedy of human life, +in which, he would say to us, we are no less the playthings of a +controlling destiny than are the figures of his puppet microcosm. + +[9] The revised version, published in 1901, is referred to. The +original edition, which appeared in 1888, is decidedly inferior. + +[10] From the "Sea Pieces," for piano. + +[Illustration: THE PIAZZA AND GARDEN WALK AT PETERBORO] + +This scope and amplitude of expression are realised through a method +at once plastic and unlaboured; his art has spontaneity--the deceptive +spontaneity of the expert craftsman. It is not, in its elements, a +strikingly novel style. His harmony, _per se_, is not unusual, if one +sets it beside the surprising combinations evolved by such innovators +as d'Indy, Debussy, and Strauss. It is in the novel disposition of +familiar material--in what Mr. Apthorp has happily called his "free, +instinctive application of the old in a new way"--that MacDowell's +emphatic individuality consists. Whether it is a more signal +achievement to create a new speech through the readjustment of +established locutions than to evolve it from fresh and unworked +elements, is open to debate. Be that as it may, however, MacDowell's +achievement is of the former order. + +His harmonic method is ingenious and pliable. An over-insistence upon +certain formulas--eloquent enough in themselves--has been charged +against it, and the accusation is not without foundation. MacDowell is +exceedingly fond, for instance, of suspensions in the chord of the +diminished seventh. There is scarcely a page throughout his later work +in which one does not encounter this effect in but slightly varied +form. Yet there is a continual richness in his harmonic texture. I can +think of no other composer, save Wagner, whose chord-progressions are +so full and opulent in colour. His tonal web is always densely +woven--he avoids "thinness" as he avoids the banal phrase and the +futile decoration. In addition to the plangency of his chord +combinations, as such, his polyphonic skill is responsible for much of +the solidity of his fabric. His pages, particularly in the more recent +works, are studded with examples of felicitous and dexterous +counterpoint--poetically significant, and of the most elastic and +untrammelled contrivance. Even in passages of a merely episodic +character, one is struck with the vitality and importance of his inner +voices. Dissonance--in the sense in which we understand dissonance +to-day--plays a comparatively unimportant part in his technical +method. The climax of the second of the "Sea Pieces"--"From a +Wandering Iceberg"--marks about as extreme a point of harmonic +conflict as he ever touches. Nor has he been profoundly affected by +the passion for unbridled chromaticism engendered in modern music by +the procedures of Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. Even in the earlier of +the orchestral works, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and +Elaine"--both written in Germany in the days when the genius of Wagner +was an ambient and inescapable flame--the writing is comparatively +free from chromatic effects. On the other hand, he is far less +audaciously diatonic than Richard Strauss. His style is, in fact, a +subtle blend of opposing tendencies. + +That his songs constitute almost a third of the entire bulk of his +work is not without significance; for his melodic gift is, probably, +the most notable possession of his art. His insistence upon the value +and importance of the _melos_ was, indeed, one of his cardinal tenets; +and he is, in his practice,--whether writing for the voice, for piano, +or for orchestra,--inveterately and frankly melodic: melodic with a +suppleness, a breadth, a freshness and spontaneity which are anything +but common in the typical music of our day. It is a curious experience +to turn from the music of such typical moderns as Loeffler and +Debussy, with its elusive melodic contours, its continual avoidance of +definite patterns, its passion for the esoteric and its horror of +direct communication, to the music of such a writer as MacDowell. For +he has accomplished the difficult and perilous feat of writing frankly +without obviousness, simply without triteness. His melodic outlines +are firm, clean-cut, apprehendable; but they are seldom commonplace in +design. His thematic substance at its best--in, say, the greater part +of the sonatas, the "Sea Pieces," the "Woodland Sketches," the "Four +Songs" of op. 56--has saliency, character, and often great beauty; and +even when it is not at its best--as in much of his writing up to his +opus 45--it has a spirit and colour that lift it securely above +mediocrity. + +It must have already become evident to anyone who has followed this +essay at an exposition of MacDowell's art that his view of the +traditional musical forms is a liberal one. Which is briefly to say +that, although his application to his art of the fundamental +principles of musical design is deliberate and satisfying, he shares +the typical modern distaste for the classic forms. His four sonatas, +his two piano concertos, and his two "modern suites" for piano are his +only important adventures in the traditional instrumental moulds. The +catalogue of his works is innocent of any symphony, overture, string +quartet, or cantata. The major portion of his work is as elastic and +emancipated in form as it is unconfined in spirit. He preferred to +shape his inspiration upon the mould of a definite poetic concept, +rather than upon a constructive formula which was, for him, artificial +and anomalous. Even in his sonatas the classic prescription is altered +or abrogated at will in accordance with the requirements of the +underlying poetic idea. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +EARLY EXPERIMENTS + + +MacDowell's impulse toward significant expression was not slow in +declaring itself. The first "modern suite" (op. 10), the earliest of +his listed works, which at first glance seems to be merely a group of +contrasted movements of innocently traditional aspect, with the +expected Praeludium, Presto, Intermezzo, Fugue, etc., contains, +nevertheless, the germ of the programmatic principle; for at the head +of the third movement (Andantino and Allegretto) one comes upon a +motto from Virgil--"Per amica silentia lunae," and the Rhapsodic is +introduced with the + + "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate" + +of Dante. The Praeludium of the second piano suite, op. 14, is also +annotated, having been suggested by lines from Byron's "Manfred." +In the "Zwei Fantasiestuecke", op. 17--"Erzaehlung" and "Hexentanz"--but +more particularly in the "Wald-Idyllen" of op. 19--"Waldesstille," +"Spiel der Nymphen," "Traeumerei," and "Driadentanz,"--a definite +poetic concept is implied. Here the formative influence of Raff is +evident. The works which follow--"Drei Poesien" ("Nachts am Meere," +"Erzaehlung aus der Ritterzeit," "Ballade"), and the "Mondbilder," +after Hans Christian Andersen--are of a similar kind. The romanticism +which pervades them is not of a very finely distilled quality: they are +not, that is to say, the product of a clarified and wholly personal +vision--of the vision which prompted the issue of such things as the +"Woodland Sketches," the "Sea Pieces," and the "New England Idyls." In +these earlier works one feels that the romantic view has been assumed +somewhat vicariously--one can imagine the favourite pupil of Raff +producing a group of "Wald-Idyllen" quite as a matter of course, and +without interior conviction. Nor is the style marked by individuality, +except in occasional passages. There are traces of his peculiar +quality in the first suite,--in the 6/8 passage of the Rhapsodie, for +example,--in portions of the first piano concerto (the _a piacere_ +passage toward the close of the first movement is particularly +characteristic), in the _Erzaehlung_, and in No. 3 (_Traeumerei_) of the +_Wald-Idyllen_; but the prevailing note of his style at this time was, +quite naturally, strongly Teutonic: one encounters in it the trail of +Liszt, of Schumann, of Raff, of Wagner. + +Not until one reaches the "Hamlet and Ophelia" is it apparent that he +is beginning to find himself. This work was written before he had +completed his twenty-fourth year; yet the music is curiously ripe in +feeling and accomplishment. There is breadth and steadiness of view in +the conception, passion and sensitiveness in its embodiment: It is +mellower, of a deeper and finer beauty, than anything he had +previously done, though nowhere has it the inspiration of his later +works. + +The second piano concerto (op. 23), completed a year later, is fairly +within the class of that order of music which it has been generally +agreed to describe as "absolute." It is innocent of any programme, +save for the fact that some of the ideas prompted by "Much Ado About +Nothing," which were to form a "Beatrice and Benedick" symphonic poem, +were, as I have related in a previous chapter, incorporated in the +scherzo. Together with its companion work, the first piano concerto; +the "Romanza" for 'cello and orchestra; the concert study, op. 36, and +such conventional _morceaux_ as the early "Serenata" and "Barcarolle" +(of which, it should be noted, there are extremely few among his +productions), it represents the very limited body of his writing which +does not, in some degree, propose and enforce a definite poetic +concept. Not elsewhere in his earlier work has MacDowell marshalled +the materials of his art with so confident an artistry as he exhibits +in this concerto. In substance the work is not extraordinary. The +manner derives something from Grieg, more from Liszt, and there is +comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation +is, throughout, the work of a music-wright of brilliant executive +capacity. In fundamental logic, in cohesion, flexibility, and symmetry +of organism, it is a brilliantly successful accomplishment. As in all +of MacDowell's writing, its allegiance is to the basic principles of +structure and design, rather than to a traditional and arbitrary +formula. + +The succeeding opus (24), comprising the "Humoreske," "March," "Cradle +Song," and "Czardas," is unimportant. Of the four pieces the gracious +"Cradle Song" is of the most worth. The group as a whole belongs to +that inconsiderable portion of his output which one cannot accept as +of serious artistic consequence. With the "Lancelot and Elaine" (op. +25), however, one comes upon a work of the grade of the "Hamlet and +Ophelia" music. MacDowell had a peculiar affinity for the spirit of +the Arthurian tales, and he was happy in whatever musical +transmutation of them he attempted. This tone-poem is, as he avows, +"after Tennyson." The work follows consistently the larger action of +the poem, and musical equivalents are sought and found for such +crucial incidents as the meeting with Elaine, the tournament, +Lancelot's downfall, his return to the court and the interview with +Guinevere, the apparition of the funeral barge, and the soliloquy of +Lancelot by the river bank. The work is dramatically conceived. There +are passages of impressive tenderness,--as in the incident of the +approaching barge; of climactic force,--as in the passage portraying +the casting away of the trophies; and there are admirable details of +workmanship. The scoring is full and adroit, though not very +elaborate. As always with him, the instrumental texture is richly +woven, although his utilisation of the possibilities of the orchestra +is far from exhaustive. One misses, for example, the colouring of +available harp effects, for which he appeared to have a distaste, +since the instrument is not required in any of his orchestral works. +That he was not satisfied with the scoring of the work is known. He +remarked to Mr. Philip Hale that it was "too full of horns"; and in +his own copy of the score, which I possess, he has made in pencil +numerous changes in the instrumentation, much to its improvement; he +has, for instance, in accord with his expressed feeling, reduced the +prominence of the horns, allotting their parts, in certain important +instances, to the wood-wind, trombones, or trumpets. + +The "Six Idyls after Goethe," for piano (op. 28), are noteworthy as +foreshadowing the candid impressionism which was to have its finest +issue in the "Woodland Sketches," "Sea Pieces," and "New England +Idyls." The Goethe paraphrases, although they have only a tithe of the +graphic nearness and felicity of the later pieces, are yet fairly +successful in their attempt to find a musical correspondence for +certain definitely stated concepts and ideas--a partial fulfilment of +the method implied in the earlier "Wald-Idyllen." He presents +himself here as one who has yielded his imagination to an intimate +contemplation of the natural world, and who already has, in some +degree, the faculty of uttering whatever revelation of its loveliness +or majesty has been vouchsafed. At once, in studying these pieces, one +observes a wide departure in method and accomplishment from the style +of the "Wald-Idyllen." In those, it seemed, the poet had somehow +failed to compose "with his eye on the object": the vision lacked +steadiness, lacked penetration--or it may be that the vision was +present, but not the power of notation. In the Goethe paraphrases, on +the other hand, we are given, in a measure, the sense of the thing +perceived; I say "in a measure," for his power of acute and +sympathetic observation and of eloquent transmutation had not yet come +to its highest pitch. Of the six "Idyls," three--"In the Woods," +"Siesta," and "To the Moonlight"--are memorable, though uneven; and of +these the third, after Goethe's "An den Mond," adumbrates faintly +MacDowell's riper manner. The "Silver Clouds," "Flute Idyl,"[11] and +"Blue Bell" are decidedly less characteristic. + +[11] The poems which suggested this and the preceding piece were used +again by MacDowell in two of the most admirable of the "Eight Songs," +op. 47. + +His third orchestral work, the symphonic poem "Lamia," is based upon +the fantastic (and what Mr. Howells would call unconscionably +"romanticistic") poem of Keats. Begun during his last year in +Wiesbaden (1888), and completed the following winter in Boston, it +stands, in the order of MacDowell's orchestral pieces, between +"Lancelot and Elaine" and the two "fragments" after the "Song of +Roland." On a fly-leaf of the score MacDowell has written this +glossary of the story as told by Keats: + + "Lamia, an enchantress in the form of a serpent, loves Lycius, a + young Corinthian. In order to win him she prays to Hermes, who + answers her appeal by transforming her into a lovely maiden. + Lycius meets her in the wood, is smitten with love for her, and + goes with her to her enchanted palace, where the wedding is + celebrated with great splendour. But suddenly Apollonius appears; + he reveals the magic. Lamia again assumes the form of a serpent, + the enchanted palace vanishes, and Lycius is found lifeless." + +Now this is obviously just the sort of thing to stir the musical +imagination of a young composer nourished on Liszt, Raff, and Wagner; +and MacDowell (he was then in his twenty-seventh year) composed his +tone-poem with evident gusto. Yet it is the weakest of his orchestral +works--the weakest and the least characteristic. There is much Liszt +in the score, and a good deal of Wagner. Only occasionally--as in the +_pianissimo_ passage for flutes, clarinets, and divided strings, +following the first outburst of the full orchestra--does his own +individuality emerge with any positiveness. MacDowell withheld the +score from publication, at the time of its composition, because of his +uncertainty as to its effect. He had not had an opportunity to secure +a reading of it by one of the _Cur-Orchester_ which had accommodatingly +tried over his preceding scores at their rehearsals; and such a thing +was of course out of the question in America. Not only was he +reluctant to put it forth without such a test, but he lacked the funds +to pay for its publication. He came to realise in later years, of +course, that the music was immature and far from characteristic, +though he still had a genuine affection for it. In a talk which I had +with him a year before his collapse, he gave me the impression that he +considered it at least as good a piece of work as its predecessors, +"Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine," though he made sport, +in his characteristic way, of its occasional juvenility and its +Wagneristic allegiances. He intended ultimately to revise and publish +the score, and he allowed it to remain on the list of his works. After +his death it was concluded that it would be wise to print the music, +for several reasons. These were, first, because of the fear lest, +if it were allowed to remain in manuscript, it might at some future +time suffer from well-meant attempts at revision; and, secondly, +because of the chance that it might be put forward, after the death +of those who knew its history, in a way which would seem to make +unwarranted pretensions for it, or would give rise to doubts as to its +authenticity. In a word, it was felt that its immediate publication +would obviate any possible misconception at some future time as to its +true relation to MacDowell's artistic evolution. It was, therefore, +published in October, 1908, twenty years after its composition, with a +dedication to Mr. Henry T. Finck. + +In "Die Sarazenen" and "Die Schoene Alda," two "fragments" for +orchestra after the "Song of Roland," numbered op. 30, a graver note +is sounded. These "fragments," originally intended to form part of a +"Roland" symphony, were published in 1891 in their present form, the +plan for a symphony having been definitely abandoned. "Die +Sarazenen" is a transcription of the scene in which Ganelon, the +traitor in Charlemagne's camp through whose perfidy Roland met his +death, swears to commit his crime. It is a forceful conception, +barbaric in colour and rhythm, and picturesquely scored. The second +fragment, "Die Schoene Alda," is, however, a more memorable work, +depicting the loveliness and the grieving of Alda, Roland's betrothed. +In spite of its strong Wagnerian leanings, the music bears the impress +of MacDowell's own style, and it has moments of rare loveliness. Both +pieces are programmatic in bent, and, with excellent wisdom, MacDowell +has quoted upon the fly-leaf of the score those portions of the "Song +of Roland" from which the conception of the music sprang. + +Like the "Idyls" after Goethe, the "Six Poems" after Heine (op. 31), +for piano, are devoted to the embodiment of a poetic subject,--with +the difference that instead of the landscape impressionism of the +Goethe studies we have a persistent impulse toward psychological +suggestion. Each of the poems which he has selected for illustration +has a burden of human emotion which the music reflects with varying +success. The style is more individualised than in the Goethe pieces, +and the invention is, on the whole, of a superior order. The "Scotch +Poem" (No. 2) is the most successful of the set; the + + "... schoene, kranke Frau, + Zartdurchsichtig und marmorblass," + +and her desolate lamenting, are sharply projected, though scarcely +with the power that he would have brought to bear upon the endeavour a +decade later. Less effective, but more characteristic, is "The +Shepherd Boy" (No. 5). This is almost, at moments, MacDowell in the +happiest phase of his lighter vein. The transition from F minor to +major, after the _fermata_ on the second page, is as typical as it is +delectable; and the fifteen bars that follow are of a markedly +personal tinge. "From Long Ago" and "From a Fisherman's Hut" are less +good, and "The Post Wagon" and "Monologue" are disappointing--the +latter especially so, because the exquisite poem which he has chosen +to enforce, the matchless lyric beginning "Der Tod, das ist die kuehle +Nacht," should, it seems, have offered an inspiring incentive. + +In the "Four Little Poems" of op. 32 one encounters a piece which it +is possible to admire without qualification: I mean the music +conceived as an illustration to Tennyson's poem, "The Eagle." The +three other numbers of this opus, "The Brook," "Moonshine," and +"Winter," one can praise only in measured terms--although "Winter," +which attempts a representation of the "widow bird" and frozen +landscape of Shelley's lyric, has some measures that dwell +persistently in the memory: but "The Eagle" is a superb achievement. +Its deliberate purpose is to realise in tone the imagery and +atmosphere of Tennyson's lines--an object which it accomplishes with +triumphant completeness. As a feat of sheer tone-painting one recalls +few things, of a similar scope and purpose, that surpass it in +fitness, concision, and felicity. It displays a power of imaginative +transmutation hitherto undisclosed in MacDowell's writing. Here are +precisely the severe and lonely mood of the opening lines of the poem, +the sense of inaccessible and wind-swept spaces, which Tennyson has so +magnificently and so succinctly conveyed. Here, too, are the far-off, +"wrinkled sea," and the final cataclysmic and sudden descent: yet, +despite the literalism of the close, there is no yielding of artistic +sobriety in the result, for the music has an unassailable dignity. It +remains, even to-day, one of MacDowell's most characteristic and +admirable performances. + +Of the "Romance" for 'cello and orchestra (op. 35), the Concert Study +(op. 36), and "Les Orientales" (op. 37),--three _morceaux_ for +piano, after Victor Hugo,--there is no need to speak in detail. +"Perfunctory" is the word which one must use to describe the creative +impulse of which they are the ungrateful legacy--an impulse less +spontaneous, there is reason to believe, than utilitarian. Perhaps +they may most justly be characterised as almost the only instances in +which MacDowell gave heed to the possibility of a reward not primarily +and exclusively artistic. They are sentimental and unleavened, and +they are far from worthy of his gifts, though they are not without a +certain rather inexpensive charm. + +[Illustration: A WINTER VIEW OF THE PETERBORO HOUSE] + +The "Marionettes" of op. 38 are in a wholly different case. Published +first in 1888, the year of MacDowell's return to America, they were +afterward extensively revised, and now appear under a radically +different guise. In its present form, the group comprises six _genre_ +studies--"Soubrette," "Lover," "Witch," "Clown," "Villain," +"Sweetheart"--besides two additions: a "Prologue" and "Epilogue." Here +MacDowell is in one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunate and +charming conceit which prompted the plan of the series, with its +half-playful, half-ironic, yet lurkingly poetic suggestions; for in +spite of the mood of bantering gaiety which placed the pieces in such +mocking juxtaposition, there is, throughout, an undertone of grave and +meditative tenderness which it is one of the peculiar properties of +MacDowell's art to communicate and enforce. This is continually +apparent in "The Lover" and "Sweetheart," fugitively so in the +"Prologue," and, in an irresistible degree, in the exceedingly poetic +and deeply felt "Epilogue"--one of the most typical and beautiful of +MacDowell's smaller works. The music of these pieces is, as with other +of his earlier works that he has since revised, confusing to the +observer who attempts to place it among his productions in the order +suggested by its opus number. For although in the list of his +published works the "Marionettes" follow immediately on the heels of +the Concert Study and "Les Orientales" the form in which they are +now most generally known represents the much later period of the +"Keltic" sonata--a fact which will, however, be sufficiently evident +to anyone who studies the two versions carefully enough to perceive +the difference between more or less experimental craftsmanship and +ripe and heedful artistry. The observer will notice in these pieces, +incidentally, the abandonment of the traditional Italian terms of +expression and the substitution of English words and phrases, which +are used freely and with adroitness to indicate every shade of the +composer's meaning. In place of the stereotyped terms of the +music-maker's familiarly limited vocabulary, we have such a system of +direct and elastic expression as Schumann adopted. Thus one finds, in +the "Prologue," such unmistakable and illuminating directions as: +"with sturdy good humour," "pleadingly," "mockingly"; in the +"Soubrette"--"poutingly"; in the "Lover"--in the "Villain"--"with +sinister emphasis," "sardonically." This method, which MacDowell has +followed consistently in all his later works, has obvious advantages; +and it becomes in his hands a picturesque and stimulating means for +the conveyance of his intentions. Its defect, equally obvious, is that +it is not, like the conventional Italian terminology, universally +intelligible. + +The "Twelve Studies" of op. 39 are less original in conception and of +less artistic moment than the "Marionettes." Their titles--among which +are a "Hunting Song," a "Romance," a "Dance of the Gnomes," and others +of like connotation--suggest, in a measure, that imperfectly realised +romanticism which I have before endeavoured to separate from the +intimate spirit of sincere romance which MacDowell has so often +succeeded in embodying. The same thing is true, though in a less +degree, of the suite for orchestra (op. 42). It is more Raff-like--not +in effect but in conception--than anything he has done. There are four +movements: "In a Haunted Forest," "Summer Idyl," "The Shepherdess' +Song," and "Forest Spirits," together with a supplement, "In October," +forming part of the original suite, but not published until several +years later. The work, as a whole, has atmosphere, freshness, +buoyancy, and it is scored with exquisite skill and charm; but somehow +it does not seem either as poetic or as distinguished as one imagines +it might have been made. It is carried through with delightful high +spirits, and with an expert order of craftsmanship; but it lacks +persuasion--lacks, to put it baldly, inspiration. + +Passing over a sheaf of piano pieces, the "Twelve Virtuoso Studies" of +op. 46 (of which the "Novelette" and "Improvisation" are most +noteworthy), we come to a stage of MacDowell's development in which, +for the first time, he presents himself as an assured and confident +master of musical impressionism and the possessor of a matured and +fully individualised style. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +A MATURED IMPRESSIONIST + + +With the completion and production of his "Indian" suite for orchestra +(op. 48) MacDowell came, in a measure, into his own. Mr. Philip Hale, +writing apropos of a performance of the suite at a concert of the +Boston Symphony Orchestra[12] in December, 1897, did not hesitate to +describe the work as "one of the noblest compositions of modern +times." Elsewhere he wrote concerning it: "The thoughts are the +musical thoughts of high imagination; the expression is that of the +sure and serene master. There are here no echoes of Raff, or Wagner, +or Brahms, men that have each influenced mightily the musical thought +of to-day. There is the voice of one composer: a virile, tender voice +that does not stammer, does not break, does not wax hysterical: the +voice of a composer that not only must pour out that which has +accumulated within him, but knows all the resources of musical +oratory--in a word, the voice of MacDowell." + +[12] The suite is dedicated to this Orchestra and its former +conductor, Mr. Emil Paur. + +MacDowell has derived the greater part of the thematic substance of +the suite, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note, from melodies of +the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary +themes of his own invention. "If separate titles for the different +movements are desired," he says in his note, "they should be arranged +as follows: I. 'Legend'; II. 'Love Song'; III. 'In War-time'; IV. +'Dirge'; V. Village Festival'"--a concession in which again one traces +a hint of the inexplicable and amusing reluctance of the musical +impressionist to acknowledge without reservation the programmatic +basis of his work. In the case of the "Indian" suite, however, the +intention is clear enough, even without the proffered titles; for the +several movements are unmistakably based upon firmly held concepts of +a definite dramatic and emotional significance. As supplemental aids +to the discovery of his poetic purposes, the phrases of direction +which he has placed at the beginning of each movement are indicative, +taken in connection with the titles which he sanctions. The first +movement, "Legend," is headed: _Not fast. With much dignity and +character_; the second movement, "Love Song," is to be played _Not +fast. Tenderly_; the third movement, "In War-time," is marked: _With +rough vigour, almost savagely_; the fourth, "Dirge": _Dirge-like, +mournfully_; the fifth, "Village Festival": _Swift and light_. + +Here, certainly, is food for the imagination, the frankest of +invitations to the impressionable listener. There is no reason to +believe that the music is built throughout upon such a detailed and +specific plan as underlies, for example, the "Lancelot and Elaine"; +the notable fact is that MacDowell has attained in this work to a +power and weight of utterance, an eloquence of communication, a +ripeness of style, and a security and strength of workmanship, which +he had not hitherto brought to the fulfilment of an avowedly +impressionistic scheme.[13] He has exposed the particular emotions and +the essential character of his subject with deep sympathy and +extraordinary imaginative force--at times with profoundly impressive +effect, as in the first movement, "Legend," and the third, "In +War-Time"; and in the overwhelmingly poignant "Dirge" he has achieved +the most profoundly affecting threnody in music since the +"Goetterdaemmerung" _Trauermarsch_. I am inclined to rank this movement, +with the sonatas and one or two of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea +Pieces," as the choicest emanation of MacDowell's genius; and of these +it is, I think, the most inspired and the most deeply felt. The +extreme pathos of the opening section, with the wailing phrase in the +muted strings under the reiterated G of the flutes (an inverted +organ-point of sixteen _adagio_ measures); the indescribable effect of +the muted horn heard from behind the scenes, over an accompaniment of +divided violas and 'cellos _con sordini_; the heart-shaking sadness +and beauty of the succeeding passage for all the muted strings; the +mysterious and solemn close: these are outstanding moments in a +masterpiece of the first rank: a page which would honour any +music-maker, living or dead. + +[13] The "Tragica" sonata, op. 45, which antedates the suite by +several years, and of which I shall write in another chapter, has a +considerably less definite content. + +In the suite as a whole he has caught and embodied the fundamental +spirit of his theme: these are the sorrows and laments and rejoicings, +not of our own day and people, but of the vanished life of an +elemental and dying race; here is the solitude of dark forests, of +illimitable and lonely prairies, and the sombreness and wildness of +one knows not what grim tragedies and romances and festivities enacted +in the shadow of a fading past. + +Into the discussion of the relation between such works as the "Indian" +suite and the establishment of a possible "American" school of music I +shall not intrude. To those of us who believe that such a "school," +whether desirable or not, can never be created through conscious +effort, and who are entirely willing to permit time and circumstance +to bring about its establishment, the subject is as wearisome as it is +unprofitable. The logic of the belief that it is possible to achieve a +representative nationalism in music by the ingenuous process of +adopting the idiom of an alien though neighbouring race is not +immediately apparent; and although MacDowell in this suite has +admittedly derived his basic material from the North American +aborigines, he never, so far as I am aware, claimed that his +impressive and noble score constitutes, for that reason, a +representatively national utterance. He perceived, doubtless, that +territorial propinquity is quite a different thing from racial +affinity; and that a musical art derived from either Indian or +Ethiopian sources can be "American" only in a partial and quite +unimportant sense. He recognised, and he affirmed the belief, that +racial elements are transitory and mutable, and that provinciality in +art, even when it is called patriotism, makes for a probable oblivion. + +I have already dwelt upon MacDowell's preoccupation with the pageant +of the natural world. If one is tempted, at times, to praise in him +the celebrant of the "mystery and the majesty of earth" somewhat at +the expense of the musical humanist, it is because he has in an +uncommon degree the intimate visualising faculty of the essential +Celt. "In all my work," he avowed a few years before his death, "there +is the Celtic influence. I love its colour and meaning. The +development in music of that influence is, I believe, a new field." +That it was a note which he was pre-eminently qualified to strike and +sustain is beyond doubt: and, as he seems to have realised, he had the +field to himself. He is, strangely enough, the first Celtic influence +of genuine vitality and importance which has been exerted upon +creative music--a singular but incontestable fact. As it is exerted by +him it has an exquisite authenticity. Again and again one is aware +that the "sheer, inimitable Celtic note," which we have long known how +to recognise in another art, is being sounded in the music of this +composer who has in his heart and brain so much of "the wisdom of old +romance." With him one realises that "natural magic" is, as Mr. Yeats +has somewhere said, "but the ancient worship of Nature and that +troubled ecstasy before her, that certainty of all beautiful places +being haunted, which is brought into men's minds." We have observed +the operation of this impulse in such comparatively immature +productions as the "Wald-Idyllen" and the "Idyls" after Goethe, in +the "Four Little Poems" of op. 32, and in the first orchestral suite; +but it is in the much later "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces," for +piano, that the tendency comes to its finest issue. + +Music, of course--from Frohberger and Haydn to Mendelssohn, Wagner, +Raff, and Debussy--abounds in examples of natural imagery. In claiming +a certain excellence for his method one need scarcely imply that +MacDowell has ever threatened the supremacy of such things as the +"Rheingold" prelude or the "Walkuere" fire music. It is as much by +reason of his choice of subjects as because of the peculiar vividness +and felicity of his expression, that he occupies so single a place +among tone-poets of the external world. He has never attempted such +vast frescoes as Wagner delighted to paint. Of his descriptive music +by far the greater part is written for the piano; so that, at the +start, a very definite limitation is imposed upon magnitude of plan. +You cannot suggest on the piano, with any adequacy of effect, a +mountain-side in flames, or the prismatic arch of a rainbow, or the +towering architecture of cloud forms; so MacDowell has confined +himself within the bounds of such canvases as he paints upon in his +"Four Little Poems" ("The Eagle," "The Brook," "Moonshine," "Winter"), +in his first orchestral suite, and in the inimitable "Woodland +Sketches" and "Sea Pieces." Thus his themes are starlight, a +water-lily, will o' the wisps, a deserted farm, a wild rose, the +sea-spell, deep woods, an old garden. As a fair exemplification of his +practice, consider, let me say, his "To a Water-lily," from the +"Woodland Sketches." It is difficult to recall anything in objective +tone-painting, for the piano or for the orchestra, conceived and +executed quite in the manner of this remarkable piece of lyrical +impressionism. Of all the composers who have essayed tonal +transcriptions of the phases of the outer world, I know of none who +has achieved such vividness and suggestiveness of effect with a +similar condensation. The form is small; but these pieces are no more +justly to be dismissed as mere "miniature work" than is Wordsworth's +"Daffodils," which they parallel in delicacy of perception, intensity +of vision, and perfection of accomplishment. The question of bulk, +length, size, has quite as much pertinence in one case as in the +other. In his work in this sort, MacDowell is often as one who, having +fallen, through the ignominies of daily life, among the barren +makeshifts of reality, "remembers the enchanted valleys." It is +touched at times with the deep and wistful tenderness, the primaeval +nostalgia, which is never very distant from the mood of his writing, +and in which, again, one is tempted to trace the essential Celt. It is +this close kinship with the secret presences of the natural world, +this intimate responsiveness to elemental moods, this quick +sensitiveness to the aroma and the magic of places, that sets him +recognisably apart. + +If in the "Indian" suite MacDowell disclosed the full maturity of his +powers of imaginative and structural design, it is in the "Woodland +Sketches" (op. 51) that his speech, freed from such incumbrances as +were imposed upon it by his deliberate adoption of an exotic idiom, +assumes for the first time some of its most engaging and distinctive +characteristics. Consider, for example, number eight of the group, "A +Deserted Farm." Here is the quintessence of his style in one of its +most frequent aspects. The manner has a curious simplicity, yet it +would be difficult to say in what, precisely, the simplicity consists; +it has striking individuality,--yet the particular trait in which it +resides is not easily determined. The simplicity is certainly not of +the harmonic plan, nor of the melodic outline, which are subtly yet +frankly conceived; and the individuality does not lie in any +eccentricity or determined novelty of effect. Both the flavour of +simplicity and of personality are, one concludes, more a spiritual +than an anatomical possession of the music. Its quality is as +intangible and pervasive as that dim magic of "unremembering +remembrance" that is awakened in some by the troubling tides of +spring; it is apparently as unsought for as are the naive utterances +of folk-song. It is his unfailing charm, and it is everywhere manifest +in his later work: that spontaneity and _insouciance_, that utter +absence of self-consciousness, which is in nothing so surprising as in +its serene antithesis to what one has come to accept--too readily, it +may be--as the dominant accent of musical modernity. + +These pieces have an inescapable fragrance, tenderness, and zest. "To +a Wild Rose," "Will o' the Wisp," "In Autumn," "From Uncle Remus," and +"By a Meadow Brook" are slight in poetic substance, though executed +with charm and humour; but the five other pieces--"At an Old Trysting +Place," "From an Indian Lodge," "To a Water-lily," "A Deserted Farm," +and "Told at Sunset"--are of a different calibre. With the exception +of "To a Water-lily," whose quality is uncomplex and unconcealed, +these tone-poems in little are a curious blend of what, lacking an +apter name, one must call nature-poetry, and psychological suggestion; +and they are remarkable for the manner in which they focus great +richness of emotion into limited space. "At an Old Trysting Place," +"From an Indian Lodge," "A Deserted Farm," and "Told at Sunset," imply +a consecutive dramatic purpose which is emphasised by their connection +through a hint of thematic community. The element of drama, though, is +not insisted upon--indeed, a large portion of the searching charm of +these pieces lies in their tactful reticence. + +In the "Sea Pieces" of op. 55 a larger impulse is at work. The set +comprises eight short pieces, few of them over two pages in length; +yet they are modelled upon ample lines, and they have, in a +conspicuous degree, that property to which I have alluded--the +property of suggesting within a limited framework an emotional or +dramatic content of large and far-reaching significance. I spoke in an +earlier chapter, in this connection, of the first of these pieces, "To +the Sea." I must repeat that this tone-poem seems to me one of the +most entirely admirable things in the literature of the piano; and it +is typical, in the main, of the volume. MacDowell is one of the +comparatively few composers who have been thrall to the spell of the +sea; none, I think, has felt that spell more irresistibly or has +communicated it with more conquering an eloquence. This music is full +of the glamour, the awe, the mystery, of the sea; of its sinister and +terrible beauty, but also of its tonic charm, its secret allurement. +Here is sea poetry to match with that of Whitman and Swinburne. The +music is drenched in salt-spray, wind-swept, exhilarating. There are +pages in it through which rings the thunderous laughter of the sea in +its mood of cosmic and terrifying elation, and there are pages through +which drift sun-painted mists--mists that both conceal and disclose +enchanted vistas and apparitions. There is an exhilaration even in his +titles (which he has supplemented with mottos): as "To the Sea," "From +a Wandering Iceberg," "Starlight," "From the Depths," "In Mid-Ocean." +I make no concealment of my unqualified admiration for these pieces: +with the sonatas, the "Dirge" from the "Indian" suite, and certain of +the "Woodland Sketches," they record, I think, his high-water mark. He +has carried them through with superb gusto, with unwearying +imaginative fervour. In "To the Sea," "From the Depths," and "In +Mid-Ocean," it is the sea of Whitman's magnificent apostrophe that he +celebrates--the sea of + + "brooding scowl and murk," + +of + + "unloosed hurricanes," + +speaking, imperiously, + + "with husky-haughty lips"; + +while elsewhere, as in the "Wandering Iceberg" and "Nautilus" studies, +the pervading tone is of Swinburne's + + "deep divine dark dayshine of the sea." + +"Starlight" is of a brooding and solemn tenderness. The "Song" and +"A.D. MDCXX." (a memoir of the notorious galleon of the Pilgrims) are +in a lighter vein. The tonal plangency, the epic quality, of these +studies is extraordinary,--exposing a tendency toward an orchestral +fulness and breadth of style that will offer a more pertinent theme +for comment in a consideration of the sonatas. Their littleness is +wholly a quantitative matter; their spiritual and imaginative +substance is not only of rare quality, but of striking amplitude. + +We come now to the final volumes in the series of what one may as well +call pianistic "nature-studies": the "Fireside Tales" (op. 61) and +"New England Idyls" (op. 62), which, together with the songs of op. +60, constitute the last of his published works (they were all issued +in 1902). In these last piano pieces there is a new quality, an +unaccustomed accent. One notes it on the first page of the opening +number of the "Fireside Tales," "An Old Love Story," where the voice +of the composer seems to have taken on an unfamiliar _timbre_. There +is here a turn of phrase, a quality of sentiment, which are notably +fresh and strange. There is in this, and in "By Smouldering Embers," a +graver tenderness, a more pervasive sobriety, than he had revealed +before. Read over the D-flat major section of "An Old Love Story." +Throughout MacDowell's previous work one will find no passage quite +like it in contour and emotion. It is quieter, more ripely poised, +than anything in his earlier manner that I can recall. "Of Br'er +Rabbit," "From a German Forest," "Of Salamanders," and "A Haunted +House," are in his familiar vein; but again the new note is sounded in +the concluding number of the book, "By Smouldering Embers." + +In the "New England Idyls," the point is still more evident. One +passes over "From an Old Garden" and "Midsummer" as belonging +fundamentally to the period of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea +Pieces." But one halts at "Mid-Winter," No. 3 of the collection; with +those fifteen bars in E-flat major in the middle section, one enters +upon unfamiliar ground in the various and delectable region of +MacDowell's fantasy. So in the succeeding piece, "With Sweet +Lavender": he had not given us in any of his former writing a theme +similar in quality to the one with which he begins the thirteenth bar. +"In Deep Woods" is less unusual--is, in fact, strongly suggestive, in +harmonic colour, of the shining sonorities of the "Wandering Iceberg" +study in the "Sea Pieces." The "Indian Idyl," "To an Old White Pine," +and "From Puritan Days" are also contrived in the familiar idiom of +the earlier volumes, though they are unfailingly resourceful in +invention and imaginative vigour. In "From a Log Cabin," though, we +come upon as surprising a thing as MacDowell's art had yielded us +since the appearance of the "Woodland Sketches." I doubt if, in the +entire body of his writing, one will find a lovelier, a more intimate +utterance. It bears as a motto the words--strangely prophetic when he +wrote them--which are now inscribed on the memorial tablet near his +grave:-- + + "A house of dreams untold, + It looks out over the whispering tree-tops + And faces the setting sun." + +[Illustration: THE "HOUSE OF DREAMS UNTOLD"--THE LOG CABIN IN THE +WOODS AT PETERBORO WHERE MACDOWELL COMPOSED, AND WHERE MOST OF HIS +LATER MUSIC WAS WRITTEN] + +The music of this piece is suffused with a mood that is Schumann-like +in its intense sincerity of impulse, yet with a passionate fulness and +ardour not elsewhere to be paralleled. It is steeped in an atmosphere +which is felt in no other of his works, is the issue of an inspiration +more profoundly contemplative than any to which he had hitherto +responded. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE SONATAS + + +MacDowell never hesitated, as I have elsewhere said, to adapt--some +would say "warp"--the sonata form to the needs of his poetic purposes. +Moreover, he declared his convictions as to the considerations which +should govern its employment. "If the composer's ideas do not +imperatively demand treatment in that [the sonata] form," he has +observed--"that is, if his first theme is not actually dependent upon +his second and side themes 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 application of this principle to his own performances in +this field, nor of the skill and tact with which he has reshaped the +form in accordance with his chosen poetic or dramatic scheme. + +His four sonatas belong undeniably, though with a variously strict +allegiance, to the domain of programme-music. Neither the "Tragica," +the "Eroica," the "Norse," nor the "Keltic," makes its appeal +exclusively to the tonal sense. 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 fully to appreciate +and enjoy the last page of the "Keltic," for instance, without some +knowledge of the dramatic crisis upon which the musician has +built--although its beauty and power, as sheer music, are immediately +perceptible. + +With the exception of the "Tragica," the poetic substratum of the +sonatas has been avowed with more or less particularity. In the +"Tragica"--his first essay in the form--he has vouchsafed only the +general indication of his purpose which is declared in the title of +the work, though it is known that in composing the music MacDowell was +moved by the memory of his grief over the death of his master Raff (it +might stand even more appropriately as a commentary on the tragedy of +his own life). The tragic note is sounded, with impressive authority +and force, in the brief introduction, _largo maestoso_. The music, +from the first, drives to the very heart of the subject: there is +neither pose nor bombast in the presentation of the thought; and this +attitude is maintained throughout--in the ingratiating loveliness of +the second subject, in the fierce striving of the middle section, in +the noble and sombre slow movement,--a _largo_ 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 profoundly moving conclusion to a noble work--a work which Mr. +James Huneker has not extravagantly called "the most marked +contribution to solo sonata literature since Brahms' F-minor piano +sonata"; yet it is not so fine a work as any one of the three sonatas +which MacDowell afterward wrote. The style evinces, for the first time +in his piano music, the striking orchestral character of his +thought--yet the writing is not, paradoxical as it may seem, +unpianistic. The suggestion of orchestral relationships is contained +in the massiveness of the harmonic texture, and in the cumulative +effect of the climaxes and crescendi. He conveys an impression of +extended tone-spaces, of a largeness, complexity, and solidity of +structure, which are peculiar to his own music, and which presuppose a +rather disdainful view of the limitations of mere strings and hammers; +yet it is all playable: its demands are formidable, but not +prohibitive. + +[Illustration (Score): FACSIMILE OF A PORTION OF THE MS. OF THE +"SONATA TRAGICA"] + +In 1895 MacDowell published his "Sonata Eroica" (op. 50), and those +who had wondered how he could better his performance in the "Tragica" +received a fresh demonstration of the extent of his gifts. For these +sonatas of his constitute an ascending series, steadily progressive in +excellence of substance and workmanship. They are, on the whole, I +think it will be determined, his most significant and important +contribution to musical art. The "Eroica" bears the motto, "Flos +regum Arthuris," and as a further index to its content MacDowell has +given this explanation: "While not exactly programme music,"[14] he +says, "I had in mind the Arthurian legend when writing this work. The +first movement typifies the coming of Arthur. The scherzo was +suggested by a picture of Dore 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 Dore"; 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 Dore 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 late!' poem. I always had a +little feeling," continues Mr. Corey, "that the sonata would have been +stronger, from a programme standpoint, with this movement +omitted--that it had perhaps been included largely as a concession to +the traditions of sonata form. The fact that no scherzos were included +in the two sonatas that followed, strengthened my opinion in regard to +this. I questioned him in regard to it later when I saw him in New +York, and he replied that it was a matter over which he had pondered +considerably, and one which had influenced him in the composition of +the last two sonatas, as the insertion of a scherzo in such a scheme +did seem something like an interruption, or 'aside.'" + +[14] It must be confessed that this qualification is a little +difficult to grasp. Is not the sonata dependent for its complete +understanding upon a knowledge of its literary basis? MacDowell +exhibits here the half-heartedness which I have elsewhere remarked +in his attitude toward representative music. + +In this sonata MacDowell has been not only faithful to his text, he +has illuminated it. Indeed, I think it would not be extravagant to say +that he has given us here the noblest musical incarnation of the +Arthurian legend which we have. It is singular, by the way, how +frequently one is impelled to use the epithet "noble" 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 significantly accented. He has +written few things more luxuriantly beautiful than the "Guinevere" +movement, nothing more elevated and ecstatic than the apotheosis which +ends the work. The diction throughout is richer and more variously +contrasted than in the earlier work, and his manipulation of the form +is more elastic. + +Apparent as is the advance of the "Eroica" over its predecessor, the +difference between these and the two later sonatas--the "Norse" and +the "Keltic"--is even more marked. The first of these, the "Norse" +sonata (op. 57) appeared five years after the publication of the +"Eroica." In the interval he had put 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 predecessors, are more determined and confident in their +expression of personality, riper in style and far freer in form: they +are, in fact, MacDowell at his most salient and distinguished. He has +placed these lines of his own on the first page of the score of the +"Norse" (which is dedicated to Grieg): + + "Night had fallen on a day of deeds. + The great rafters in the red-ribbed hall + Flashed crimson in the fitful flame + Of smouldering logs; + And from the stealthy shadows + That crept 'round Harald's throne + Rang out a Skald's strong voice + With tales of battles won: + Of Gudrun's love + And Sigurd, Siegmund's son." + +Here, evidently, is a subject after his own heart, presenting such +opportunities as he is at his happiest in improving--and he has +improved them magnificently. The spaciousness of the plan, the boldness +of the drawing, the fulness and intensity of the colour scheme, engage +one's attention at the start. He has indulged almost to its extreme +limits his 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 elemental vigour and ferocity--passages, again, of +an exquisite tenderness and poignancy. Of the three movements which the +work comprises, the first makes the most lasting impression, although +the second (the slow movement) has a haunting subject, which is +recalled episodically in the final movement in a passage of +unforgettable beauty and character. + +With the publication, in 1901, of the "Keltic" sonata (his fourth, op. +59),[15] MacDowell achieved a conclusive demonstration of his capacity +as a creative musician of unquestionable importance. Not before had he +given so convincing an earnest of the larger aspect of his genius: +neither in the three earlier sonatas, in the "Sea Pieces," nor in the +"Indian" 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 take up spears and die for a name," no less +than "the beauty of the poets that take up harp and sorrow and the +wandering road"--a harp shaken with a wild and piercing music, a +sorrow that is not of to-day, but of a past when dreams were actual +and imperishable, and men lived the tales of beauty and of wonder +which now are but a discredited and fading memory. + +[15] Dedicated, like the "Norse," to Grieg. + +It was a fortunate, if not an inevitable, event, in view of his +temperamental affiliations with the Celtic genius, that MacDowell +should have been made aware of the suitability for musical treatment +of the ancient heroic chronicles of the Gaels, and that he should +have gone for his 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 Deirdre,--whose loveliness was such, so say the +chroniclers, that "not upon the ridge of earth was there a woman so +beautiful,"--and the life and adventures and glorious death of the +incomparable Cuchullin. These two kindred legends MacDowell has +welded into a coherent and satisfying whole; and in a verse with +which he prefixes the sonata, he gives this index to its poetic +content: + + "Who minds now Keltic tales of yore, + Dark Druid rhymes that thrall; + Deirdre's song, and wizard lore + Of great Cuchullin's fall." + +At the time of the publication of the sonata he wrote to me as +follows concerning it: + + "... Here is the sonata, which it is a pleasure to me to offer you + as a token of sympathy. I enclose also some lines [of his own + verse] anent Cuchullin, which, however, 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. Cuchullin's story is in touch with the Deirdre-Naesi + tale; and, as with my 3rd Sonata, the music is more a commentary + on the subject than an actual depiction of it." + +[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PASSAGE FROM THE ORIGINAL MS. OF THE +"KELTIC" SONATA] + +The "lines anent Cuchullin" I quote below. They do not, as he said, +have a parallel in the sonata as a whole; but in the _coda_ of the +last movement (of which I shall speak later) he has attempted a +commentary on the scene which he here describes: + + "Cuchullin fought and fought in vain, + 'Gainst faery folk and Druid thrall: + And as the queenly sun swept down. + In royal robes, red gold besown, + With one last lingering glance + He sate himself in lonely state + Against a giant monolith, + To wait Death's wooing call. + None dared approach the silent shape + That froze to iron majesty, + Save the wan, mad daughters of old Night, + Blind, wandering maidens of the mist, + Whose creeping fingers, cold and white, + Oft by the sluggard dead are kissed. + And yet the monstrous Thing held sway, + No living soul dared say it nay; + When lo! upon its shoulder still, + Unconscious of its potent will, + There perched a preening birdling gray, + A'weary of the dying day; + And all the watchers knew the lore: + Cuchullin was no more." + +To Mr. Corey MacDowell wrote: + + "... Even though you are not on intimate terms with Deirdre, + Cuchullin, etc., you will easily perceive from the music that + something extremely unpleasant is happening. Joking aside, I will + confess to a certain fascination the subject has for me. So much + so that 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 sonata is more of a 'bardic' rhapsody on the subject + than an attempt at actual presentation of it, although I have + made use of all the suggestion of tone-painting in my power,--just + as the bard would have reinforced _his_ speech with gesture + and facial expression." + +He aimed to make his music, as he says, "more a commentary on the +subject than an actual depiction of it"; but the case would be stated +more truly, I think, if one were to say that he has penetrated to the +heart of the entire body of legends, has imbued himself with their +ultimate spirit and significance, and has bodied it forth in his music +with splendid veracity and eloquence. He has attempted no mere musical +recounting of those romances of the ancient Gaelic world at which he +hints in his 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 letters has so signally failed to +revive. For it is, I repeat, the heroic Gaelic world that MacDowell +has made to live again in his music: that miraculous world of +stupendous passions and aspirations, of bards and heroes and great +adventure--the world of Cuchullin the Unconquerable, and Laeg, and +Queen Meave; of Naesi, and Deirdre the Beautiful, and Fergus, and +Connla the Harper, and those kindred figures, lovely or greatly +tragical, that are like no other figures in the world's mythologies. + +This sonata marks the consummation of his evolution toward the acme of +powerful expression. It is cast in a mould essentially heroic; it has +its moods of tenderness, of insistent sweetness, but these are +incidental: the governing mood is signified in the tremendous exordium +with which the work opens, and which is sustained, with few +deviations, throughout the work. Deirdre 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 worthy of +comparison with the sumptuous pen-portrait of her in Standish +O'Grady's "Cuculain": "a woman of wondrous beauty, bright gold her +hair, eyes piercing and splendid, tongue full of sweet sounds, her +countenance like the colour of snow blended with crimson." + +In the close of the last movement we are justified in seeing a +translation of the sublime tradition of Cuchullin's death. This it is +which furnished MacDowell with the theme that he celebrates in the +lines of verse which I have quoted above. I believe that he was +planning an orchestral setting of this scene; and that, had he lived, +we should have had from him a symphonic poem, "Cuchullin." + +The manner of the hero's death is thus described by Standish O'Grady: +"Cuculain sprang forth, but as he sprang, Lewy MacConroi pierced him +through the bowels. Then fell the great hero of the Gael. Thereat the +sun darkened, and the earth trembled ... when, with a crash, fell that +pillar of heroism, and that flame of the warlike valour of Erin was +extinguished.... Then Cuculain, raising his eyes, saw thence +northwards from the lake 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 with languid hands a loose knot, +which soon was made fast by the weight of the dying hero; thus they +beheld him standing with the drawn sword in his hand, and the rays of +the setting sun bright on his panic-striking helmet. So stood +Cuculain, even in death-pangs, a terror to his enemies, for a deep +spring of stern valour was opened in his soul, and the might of his +unfathomable spirit sustained him. Thus perished Cuculain ..." + +Superb as this is, it is paralleled by MacDowell's tone-picture. That, +for nobility of conception, for majestic solemnity and pathos, is a +musical performance which measures up to the level of superlative +achievements. + +If there is anything in the literature of the piano since the death of +Beethoven which, for combined passion, dignity, breadth of style, +weight of momentum, and irresistible plangency of emotion, is +comparable to the four sonatas which have been considered here, I do +not know of it. And I write these words with a perfectly definite +consciousness of all that they may be held to imply. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SONGS + + +Any one who should undertake casually to examine MacDowell's songs +_seriatim_, beginning with his earliest listed work in this form--the +"Two Old Songs," op. 9--would not improbably be struck by an apparent +lack of continuity and logic in the initial stages of his artistic +development. At first glance, MacDowell seems to have attained a +phenomenal ripeness and individuality of expression in these songs, +which head the catalogue of his published works; whereas the songs of +the following opus (11-12) are conventional and unimportant. The +explanation, which I have elsewhere intimated, is simple. The songs of +op. 11 and 12, issued in 1883, were the first of his _Lieder_ to appear +in print; the songs numbered op. 9, which would appear to antedate +them in composition and publication, were not written until a decade +later, when they were issued under an arbitrary opus number as a +matter of expediency. Their proper place in MacDowell's musical +history is, therefore, about synchronous with the mature and +characteristic "Eight Songs" of op. 47. From the five songs now +published in one volume as op. 11 and 12, the progress of MacDowell's +art as a song writer is both steady and intelligible. + +He has not been especially prolific in this field, when one thinks of +Grieg's one hundred and twenty songs, and of Brahms' one hundred and +ninety-six; not to mention Schumann's two hundred and forty-eight, or +Schubert's amazing six hundred and over. MacDowell has written +forty-two songs for single voice and piano, together with a number of +ingenious and effective pieces for men's voices and for mixed chorus. + +He has avowed his methods and principles as a song writer. In an +interview published a few years before his death he declared his +opinion to be that "song writing should follow declamation"--that the +composer "should declaim the poems in sounds: the attention of the +hearer should be fixed upon the central point of declamation. The +accompaniment should be merely a background for the words. Harmony is +a frightful den for the small composer to get into--it leads him into +frightful nonsense. Too often the accompaniment of a song becomes a +piano fantasie with no resemblance to the melody. Colour and harmony +under such conditions mislead the composer; he uses it instead of the +line which he at the moment is setting, and obscures the central +point, the words, by richness of tissue and overdressing; and all +modern music is labouring under that. He does not seem to pause to +think that music was not made merely for pleasure, but to say things. + +"Language and music have nothing in common. In one way, that which is +melodious in verse becomes doggerel in music, and meter is hardly of +value. Sonnets in music become abominable. I have made many +experiments for finding the affinity of language and music. The two +things are diametrically opposed, unless music is free to distort +syllables. A poem may be of only four words, and yet those four words +may contain enough suggestion for four pages of music; but to found a +song on those four words would be impossible. For this reason the +paramount value of the poem is that of its suggestion in the field of +instrumental music, where a single line may be elaborated upon.... +To me, in this respect, the poem holds its highest value of +suggestion.... A short poem would take a lifetime to express; to do +it in as many bars of music is impossible. The words clash with the +music, they fail to carry the full suggestion of the poem ... + +"Many poems contain syllables ending with _e_ or other letters not +good to sing. Some exceptionally beautiful poems possess this +shortcoming, and, again, words that prove insurmountable obstacles. I +have in mind one by Aldrich in which the word 'nostrils' occurs in the +very first verse, and one cannot do anything with it. Much of the +finest poetry--for instance, the wonderful writings of Whitman--proves +unsuitable, yet it has been undertaken.... + +"A song, if at all dramatic, should have climax, form, and plot, as +does a play. Words to me seem so paramount and, as it were, apart in +value from the musical setting, that, while I cannot recall the +melodies of many of the songs that I have written, the words of them +are so indelibly impressed upon my mind that they are very easy of +recall.... Music and poetry cannot be accurately stated unless one has +written both." + +It is clear that these are the views of a composer who placed +veracious declamation of the poetic idea very much to the front in his +conception of the art of the song-writer. They explain in part, also, +the fact that MacDowell himself wrote the words of many of his songs, +though, quite characteristically, he did not avow the fact in the +printed music. The verses of all the songs of op. 56, save one, op. +58, and op. 60 (the last three sets that he wrote), of the "Slumber +Song" of op. 9, of "The Robin Sings in the Apple Tree," "Confidence," +and "The West Wind Croons in the Cedar Trees" (op. 47), and of some of +the choruses, were of his authorship. He enjoyed what he called +"stringing words together," and most of his verses were written +off-hand, with a facility which betrayed the marked gift for verbal +expression which is apparent in his often admirably stated lectures. +But his especial reason for writing the words for his songs was his +difficulty hi finding texts which quite suited him. Many poems which +he would have liked to set were, as he explained in the words I have +quoted, full of snags in the way of unsingable words. And though it +used to make him uncomfortable to do so, he often felt compelled for +this reason to refuse much otherwise excellent poetry that was sent to +him with the request that he use it for music. Some of the verse that +he wrote for use in his songs is of uncommon quality--imaginative, +distinguished in diction, and, above all, perfectly suited to musical +utterance. Of uncommon quality, too, are some of the brief verses +which he used as mottos for certain of his later piano pieces--as for +the "Sea Pieces" and "New England Idyls." + +That his songs, as a whole, are comparable in inherent artistic +consequence with his sonatas, or with such things as the "Woodland +Sketches," the "Sea Pieces," and the "New England Idyls," I do not +believe, although I readily grant the beauty and fascination of many +passages, and of certain pages in which he is incontestably at the +height of his powers. Here, as in his writing for piano and for +orchestra, one will find abundant evidence of his distinguishing +traits--sensitiveness and fervour of imagination, a lovely and +intimate sense of romance, whimsical and piquant humour, virility, +passion, an unerring instinct for atmospheric suggestion. But there +are times when, despite his avowed principles in the matter, he +sacrifices truth of declamation to the presumed requirements of +melodic design--when he seems to pay more heed to the unrelated effect +of tonal contours than to the dramatic or emotional needs of his text. +As an instance of his not infrequent indifference to justness of +declamatory utterance, examine his setting of "in those brown eyes," +at the bottom of the last page of "Confidence" (op. 47), and of the +word "without" in the fourth bar of "Tyrant Love" (op. 60). I dwell +upon this point, not in any spirit of captiousness, I need scarcely +say, but because it exemplifies a fairly persistent characteristic of +MacDowell's style as a song writer. + +Of that other trait to which I have referred--his not exceptional +preoccupation with a purely musical plan at the expense of dramatic +and emotional congruity--the attentive observer will not want for +examples in almost any of MacDowell's song-groups. As a single +instance, I may allege the run in eighth-notes which encumbers the +setting of the second syllable of the word "again," in the fourth bar +of "Springtide" (op. 60). Such infelicities are difficult to account +for in the work of a musician so exceedingly sensitive in matters of +poetic fitness as he. It may be that his acute sense of dramatic and +emotional values operated perfectly only when he was unhampered by the +thought of the voice. + +I have dwelt upon this point because it should be noted in any candid +study of his traits as a song writer. Yet it is not a defect which +weighs heavily against him when one considers the musical quality of +his songs as a whole. Not, as a whole, equal to his piano music, they +are admirable and deeply individual; and the best of them are not +surpassed in any body of modern song-writing. + +[Illustration: THE MUSIC-ROOM AT PETERSBORO] + +In almost all of his songs the voice is predominant over the piano +part--although he is far, indeed, from writing mere accompaniments: +the support which he gives the voice is consistently important, for he +brings to bear upon it all his rich resources of harmonic expression. +But though he makes the voice the paramount element, he uses it, in +general, rather as a vehicle for the unconscious exposition of a +determined lyricism than as an instrument of precise emotional +utterance. When one thinks of how Hugo Wolf, for example, or Debussy, +would have treated the phrase, "to wake again the bitter joy of love," +in "Fair Springtide," it will be felt, I think, that MacDowell's +setting leaves something to be desired on the score of emotional +verity, although the song, as a whole, is one of the loveliest and +most spontaneous he has written. I do not mean to say that he does not +often achieve an ideal correspondence between the significance of his +text and the effect of his music; but when he does--as in, for +instance, that superb tragedy in little, "The Sea,"[16] or in the +still finer "Sunrise"[17]--one's impression is that it is the +fortunate result of chance, rather than the outcome of deliberate +artistic purpose. It is in songs of an untrammelled lyricism that his +art finds its chief opportunity. In such he is both delightful and +satisfying--in, for instance, the six flower songs, "From an Old +Garden"; in "Confidence" and "In the Woods" (op. 47); in "The Swan +Bent Low to the Lily," "A Maid Sings Light," and "Long Ago" (op. 56); +and in the delectable "To the Golden Rod," from his last song group +(op. 60). This is music of blithe and captivating allurement, of grave +or riant tenderness, of compelling fascination; and in it, the word +and the tone are ideally mated. Yet even in others of his songs in +which they do not so invariably correspond, one must acknowledge +gladly the beauty and freshness of the music itself: such music as he +has given us in "Constancy" (op. 58), in "As the Gloaming Shadows +Creep" (op. 56), in "Fair Springtide"--which represent his ripest +utterances as a song writer. If he is not, in this particular form, +quite at his happiest, he is among the foremost of those who have kept +alive in the modern tradition the conception of the song as a medium +of lyric utterance no less than of precise dramatic signification. + +[16] No. VII. of the "Eight Songs," op. 47. + +[17] Op. 58, No. II. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SUMMARY + + +To gain a true sense of MacDowell's place in American music it is +necessary to remember that twenty-five years ago, when he sent from +Germany, as the fruit of his apprenticeship there, the earliest +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 vitality +and the rarity of his gifts; yet there was, even in his early +music,--undeniably immature though it was, and modelled after easily +recognised Teutonic masters,--a fresh and untrammelled impulse. A new +note vibrated through it, a new and buoyant personality suffused it. +Thenceforth music in America possessed an artistic figure of +constantly increasing stature. MacDowell commanded, from the start, +an original idiom, a manner of speech which has been recognised even +by his detractors as entirely his own. + +His style is as pungent and unmistakable as Grieg's, and far less +limited in its variety. Hearing certain melodic turns, certain +harmonic formations, you recognise them at once as belonging to +MacDowell, and to none other. This marked individuality of speech, +apparent from the first, became constantly more salient and more +vivid, and in the music which he gave forth at the height of his +creative activity,--in, say, the "Sea Pieces" and the last two +sonatas,--it is unmistakable and beyond dispute. This emphatically +personal accent 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, they had +dexterity, they had, in a measure, scholarship; but their art was +obviously derivative, without originality of substance or a telling +quality of style. It is not a needlessly harsh asseveration to say +that, until MacDowell began to put forth his more individual works, +our music had been palpably, almost frankly, dependent: an undisguised +and naive transplantation, made rather feeble and anaemic in the +process, of European growths. The result was admirable, in its way, +praiseworthy, in its way--and wholly negligible. + +The music of MacDowell was, almost from the first, in a wholly +different case. In its early phases it, too, was imitative, +reflective. MacDowell returned to America, after a twelve years' +apprenticeship to European influences, in 1888, bringing with him his +symphonic poems, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine," his +unfinished "Lamia," his two orchestral paraphrases of scenes from the +Song of Roland, two concertos, and numerous songs and 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 various forms, a constantly finer and weightier +expression. For orchestra he wrote the "Indian" suite--music of superb +vigour, fantastically and deeply imaginative, wholly personal in +quality; for the piano he wrote four sonatas of heroic and passionate +content--indisputable masterworks--and various shorter pieces, free in +form and poetic in inspiration; and he wrote many songs, some of them +quite flawless in their loveliness and their emotional veracity. + +It will thus be seen why the potent and aromatic art of MacDowell +impressed those who were able to feel its charm and estimate its +value. It is mere justice to him, now 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 +of native birth) its single impressive and vital figure. His is the +one name in our music which, for instance, one would venture to pair +with that of Whitman in poetry. + +An abundance of pregnant, beautiful, and novel ideas was his chief +possession, and he fashioned them into musical designs with great +skill and unflagging art. That he did not undertake adventures in all +of the forms of music, has been said. There is no symphony in the list +of his published works, no large choral composition. Yet he was far +from being a miniaturist,--he was, in fact, anything but that. His +four sonatas for the piano are planned 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," and "Lamia"; the two "fragments," "The Saracens," and "The +Lovely Alda," and the first orchestral suite, op. 42--which he might +have entitled "Sylvan"--complete the record of his output, save for +some spirited but not very important part-songs for male voices. The +list comprises sixty-two opus numbers and one hundred and eighty-six +separate compositions,--not a remarkable accomplishment, in point of +quantity, yet notable and rare in quality. + +He suggested, at his best, no one save himself. He was one of the most +individual writers who ever made music--as individual as Chopin, or +Debussy, or Brahms, or Grieg. His mannner of speech was utterly +untrammelled, and wholly his own. Vitality--an abounding freshness, a +perpetual youthfulness--was one of his prime traits; nobility--nobility +of style and impulse--was another. The morning freshness, the welling +spontaneity of his music, even in moments of exalted or passionate +utterance, was continually surprising: it was music not unworthy of the +golden ages of the world. Yet MacDowell was a Celt, and his music is +deeply Celtic--mercurial, by turns dolorous and sportive, darkly +tragical and exquisitely blithe, and overflowing with the unpredictable +and inexplicable magic 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 Brahms. He would have smiled at the +dictum of Emerson: "a beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty of +which we can see the end." He knew how to evoke a kind of beauty that +was both aerial and enchanted; but it was a clarified and lucid beauty, +even then: it was never dim or wavering. He would never, as I have +said, have comprehended the art of such a writer as Debussy--he viewed +the universe from a wholly different angle. Of the moderns, Wagner he +worshipped, Tchaikovsky deeply moved him, Grieg he loved--Grieg, who +was his artistic inferior in almost every respect. Yet none of these so +seduced his imagination that his independence was overcome--he was +always, throughout his maturity, himself; not arrogantly or +insistently, but of necessity; he could not be otherwise. + +What are the distinguishing traits, after all, of MacDowell's music? +The answer is not easily given. His music is characterised by great +buoyancy and freshness, by an abounding vitality, by a constantly +juxtaposed tenderness and strength, by a pervading nobility of tone +and feeling. It is charged with emotion, yet it is not brooding or +hectic, and it is seldom intricate or recondite in its psychology. It +is music curiously free from the fevers of sex. And here I do not wish +to be misunderstood. This music is anything but androgynous. It is +always virile, often passionate, and, in its intensest moments, full +of force and vigour. But the sexual impulse which underlies it is +singularly fine, strong, and controlled. The strange and burdened +winds, the subtle delirium, the disorder of sense, that stir at times +in the music of Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, are not to be found +here. In Wagner, in certain songs by Debussy, one often feels, as +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 is never, in its +expression, ambiguous or exotic, his sensuousness is never luscious. +It is difficult to think of a single passage from which that accent +upon which I have dwelt--the accent of nobility, of a certain +chivalry, a certain rare and spontaneous dignity--is absent. Yet he +can be, withal, wonderfully tender and deeply impassioned, with a +sharpness of emotion that is beyond denial. In such songs as +"Deserted" (op. 9); "Menie" (op. 34); "The Robin Sings in the Apple +Tree," "The West Wind Croons in the Cedar Trees" (op. 47); "The Swan +Bent Low to the Lily," "As the Gloaming Shadows Creep" (op. 56); +"Constancy" (op. 58); "Fair Springtide" (op. 60); in "Lancelot and +Elaine"; in "Told at Sunset," from the "Woodland Sketches"; in "An Old +Love Story," from "Fireside Tales": in this music the emotion is the +distinctive emotion of sex; but it is the sexual emotion known to +Burns rather than to Rossetti, to Schubert rather than to Wagner. + +He had the rapt and transfiguring imagination, in the presence of +nature, which is the special possession of the Celt. Yet he was more +than a mere landscape painter. The human drama was for him a +continually moving spectacle; 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 superb pageant of heroic grief and equally +heroic love which is comprised within the four movements of the +"Keltic" sonata, and in the piercing sadness and the transporting +tenderness of the "Dirge" in the "Indian" suite. + +In its general aspect his later music is not German, or French, or +Italian--its spiritual antecedents are Northern, both Celtic and +Scandinavian. MacDowell had not the Promethean imagination, 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 theirs, an order of +eloquence that is not theirs, a kind of poetry whose secrets they do +not know; and there speaks through it and out of it an individuality +that is persuasive, lovable, unique. + +There is no need to attempt, at this juncture, to speculate concerning +his place among the company of the greater dead; it is enough to avow +the conviction that he possessed genius of a rare order, that he +wrought nobly and valuably for the art of the country which he loved. + + + + +LIST OF WORKS + +COMPOSITIONS OF EDWARD MACDOWELL + + +Op. 9. _Two Old Songs_, for voice and piano (1894)[18]: + 1. Deserted + 2. Slumber Song + +[18] The publication dates given here are those of the original +editions. + +Op. 10. First _Modern Suite_, for piano (1883): + Praeladium--Presto--Andantino and + Allegretto--Intermezzo--Rhapsody--Fugue + +Op. 11.] _An Album of Five Songs_, for voice and piano +Op. 12.] 1. My Love and I + 2. You Love me Not + 3. In the Skies + 4. Night-Song + 5. Bands of Roses + +Op. 13. _Prelude and Fugue_, for piano (1883) + +Op. 14. _Second Modern Suite_, for piano (1883): + Praeludium--Fugato--Rhapsody--Scherzino--March--Fantastic + Dance + +Op. 15. _First Concerto_, in A-minor, for piano and orchestra (1885) + +Op. 16. _Serenata_, for piano (1883) + +Op. 17. _Two Fantastic Pieces_, for piano (1884): + 1. Legend + 2. Witches' Dance + +Op. 18. _Two Compositions_, for piano (1884): + 1. Barcarolle + 2. Humoresque + +Op. 19. _Forest Idyls_, for piano (1884): + 1. Forest Stillness + 2. Play of the Nymphs + 3. Revery + 4. Dance of the Dryads + +Op. 20. _Three Poems_, for piano, four hands (1886): + 1. Night at Sea + 2. A Tale of the Knights + 3. Ballad + +Op. 21. _Moon Pictures_, for piano, four hands (1886): + 1. The Hindoo Maiden + 2. Stork's Story + 3. In Tyrol + 4. The Swan + 5. Visit of the Bear + +Op. 22. _Hamlet and Ophelia_, symphonic poem for orchestra (1885) + +Op. 23. _Second Concerto_, in D-minor, for piano and orchestra + (1890) + +Op. 24. _Four Compositions_, for piano (1887): + 1. Humoresque + 2. March + 3. Cradle Song + 4. Czardas + +Op. 25. _Lancelot and Elaine_, symphonic poem for orchestra (1888) + +Op. 26. _From an Old Garden_, for voice and piano (1887): + 1. The Pansy + 2. The Myrtle + 3. The Clover + 4. The Yellow Daisy + 5. The Blue Bell + 6. The Mignonette + +Op. 27. _Three Songs_, for male chorus (1890): + 1. In the Starry Sky Above Us + 2. Springtime + 3. The Fisherboy + +Op. 28. _Six Idyls after Goethe_, for piano (1887): + 1. In the Woods + 2. Siesta + 3. To the Moonlight + 4. Silver Clouds + 5. Flute Idyl + 6. The Bluebell + +Op. 29. _Lamia_, symphonic poem for orchestra (1908)[19] + +[19] Posthumous. + +Op. 30. _The Saracens; The Lovely Alda_, two fragments +(after the Song of Roland), for orchestra (1891) + +Op. 31. _Six Poems after Heine_, for piano (1887): + 1. From a Fisherman's Hut + 2. Scotch Poem + 3. From Long Ago + 4. The Post Wagon + 5. The Shepherd Boy + 6. Monologue + +Op. 32. _Four Little Poems_, for piano (1888): + 1. The Eagle + 2. The Brook + 3. Moonshine + 4. Winter + +Op. 33. _Three Songs_, for voice and piano (1894): + 1. Prayer + 2. Cradle Hymn + 3. Idyl + +Op. 34. _Two Songs_, for voice and piano (1889): + 1. Menie + 2. My Jean + +Op. 35. _Romance_, for violoncello and orchestra (1888) + +Op. 36. _Etude de Concert_, in F-sharp, for piano (1889) + +Op. 37. _Les Orientales_, for piano (1889): + 1. Clair de Lune + 2. Dans le Hamac + 3. Danse Andalouse + +Op. 38. _Marionettes_, Eight Little Pieces, for piano (1888)[20]: + 1. Prologue + 2. Soubrette + 3. Lover + 4. Witch + 5. Clown + 6. Villain + 7. Sweetheart + 8. Epilogue + +[20] In their original form this set comprised only six pieces. +MacDowell afterward revised them extensively, rearranged their order, +and added the "Prologue" and "Epilogue." In this altered form they +were published in 1901. + +Op. 39. _Twelve Studies_, for piano (1890): + [ Hunting Song + | Alla Tarantella + | Romance +Book 1. | Arabesque + | In the Forest + | Dance of the Gnomes] + [ Idyl + | Shadow Dance +Book 2. | Intermezzo] + | Melody + | Scherzino + | Hungarian] + +Op. 40. _Six Love Songs_, for voice and piano (1890): + 1. Sweet, Blue-eyed Maid + 2. Sweetheart, Tell Me + 3. Thy Beaming Eyes + 4. For Love's Sweet Sake + 5. O Lovely Rose + 6. I Ask but This + +Op. 41. _Two Songs_, for male chorus (1890): + 1. Cradle Song + 2. Dance of the Gnomes + +Op. 42. _First Suite_, for orchestra (1891-1893[21]): + 1. In a Haunted Forest + 2. Summer Idyl + 3. In October + 4. The Shepherdess' Song + 5. Forest Spirits + +[21] As originally published, in 1891, this suite comprised only the +first, second, fourth, and fifth movements. The third, "In October," +though composed at the same time as the others, and intended for +inclusion in the suite, was not published until 1893, when it was +issued as a "supplement" under the same opus number. + +Op. 43. _Two Northern Songs_, for mixed chorus (1891): + 1. The Brook + 2. Slumber Song + +Op. 44. _Barcarolle_, for mixed chorus with four-hand piano +accompaniment (1892) + +Op. 45. _Sonata Tragica_, for piano (1893) + +Op. 46. _Twelve Virtuoso Studies_, for piano (1894): + 1. Novelette + 2. Moto Perpetuo + 3. Wild Chase + 4. Improvisation + 5. Elfin Dance + 6. Valse triste + 7. Burleske + 8. Bluette + 9. Traeumerei + 10. March Wind + 11. Impromptu + 12. Polonaise + +Op. 47. _Eight Songs_, for voice and piano (1893): + 1. The Robin Sings in the Apple Tree + 2. Midsummer Lullaby + 3. Folk Song + 4. Confidence + 5. The West Wind Croons in the Cedar Trees + 6. In the Woods + 7. The Sea + 8. Through the Meadow + +Op. 48. _Second (Indian) Suite_, for orchestra (1897): + 1. Legend + 2. Love Song + 3. In War-time + 4. Dirge + 5. Village Festival + +Op. 49. _Air and Rigaudon_, for piano (1894) + +Op. 50. _Second Sonata (Eroica)_, for piano (1895) + +Op. 51. _Woodland Sketches_, for piano (1896): + 1. To a Wild Rose + 2. Will'-o-the-Wisp + 3. At an Old Trysting Place + 4. In Autumn + 5. From an Indian Lodge + 6. To a Water-lily + 7. From Uncle Remus + 8. A Deserted Farm + 9. By a Meadow Brook + 10. Told at Sunset + +Op. 52. _Three Choruses_, for male voices (1897): + 1. Hush, hush! + 2. From the Sea + 3. The Crusaders + +Op. 53. _Two Choruses_, for male voices (1898): + 1. Bonnie Ann + 2. The Collier Lassie + +Op. 54. _Two Choruses_, for male voices (1898): + 1. A Ballad of Charles the Bold + 2. Midsummer Clouds + +Op. 55. _Sea Pieces_, for piano (1898): + 1. To the Sea + 2. From a Wandering Iceberg + 3. A.D. 1620 + 4. Starlight + 5. Song + 6. From the Depths + 7. Nautilus + 8. In Mid-Ocean + +Op. 56. _Four Songs_, for voice and piano (1898): + 1. Long Ago + 2. The Swan Bent Low to the Lily + 3. A Maid Sings Light + 4. As the Gloaming Shadows Creep + +Op. 57. _Third Sonata (Norse)_, for piano (1900) + +Op. 58. _Three Songs_, for voice and piano (1899): + 1. Constancy + 2. Sunrise + 3. Merry Maiden Spring + +Op. 59. _Fourth Sonata (Keltic)_, for piano (1901) + +Op. 60. _Three Songs_, for voice and piano (1902): + 1. Tyrant Love + 2. Fair Springtide + 3. To the Golden Rod + +Op. 61. _Fireside Tales_, for piano (1902): + 1. An Old Love Story + 2. Of Br'er Rabbit + 3. From a German Forest + 4. Of Salamanders + 5. A Haunted House + 6. By Smouldering Embers + +Op. 62. _New England Idyls_, for piano (1902): + 1. An Old Garden + 2. Midsummer + 3. Mid-winter + 4. With Sweet Lavender + 5. In Deep Woods + 6. Indian Idyl + 7. To an Old White Pine + 8. From Puritan Days + 9. From a Log Cabin + 10. The Joy of Autumn + + +WITHOUT OPUS NUMBER + + _Two Songs from the Thirteenth Century_, for male chorus (1897): + 1. Winter Wraps his Grimmest Spell + 2. As the Gloaming Shadows Creep + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDWARD MACDOWELL*** + + +******* This file should be named 14109.txt or 14109.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/1/0/14109 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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