Scan 21
The American history and encyclopedia of music, 1908
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1MacDowell
2no progress was to be made there and returned to Frankfort, where he gave private lessons and devoted much time to composition. He visited Liszt at Weimar, and the veteran musician, recognizing his ability, invited him to play his first piano suite at the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik-Verein held at Zurich in July, 1882. In Frankfort he met his wife, Marion Nevins, of New York, whom Raff had sent to MacDowell for lessons, because she spoke little German. They were married in 1884 and the following year removed to Wiesbaden, where for about two years they lived a delightfully retired life. To this period belong the three songs, Mein Liebchen, Du Liebst mich nicht, and Oben, wo die Sterne glühen, which comprise Op. 2; Nachtlied and Das Rosenband, included in Op. 12; a prelude and fugue; the second piano suite; the first piano concerto; the Serenade; two Fantasiestücke; Erzählung; Hexantanz; Barcarolle and Humoresque, Op. 18; the Wald-Idyllen; Drei Poesin and Mondbilder for four hands; also the two tone-poems for orchestra, entitled Hamlet and Ophelia, and dedicated to Sir Henry Irving.
4In the autumn of 1888 MacDowell returned to America and settled in Boston. He was already well known as a composer, and made his first appearance as a pianist at Chickering Hall with the Kneisel Quartet in November, 1888. In 1889 he played at a Thomas Orchestra concert in New York and achieved instant success. From that time forward his reputation as a composer and performer grew, until in 1896 at a concert in New York, the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the first piano concerto, The Indian Suite, on the same program. In the autumn of 1896 a Chair of Music was endowed at Columbia University in New York City and MacDowell was called to fill it. Inharmonious conditions at the University and a desire to devote most of his time to composition led him to resign this position in 1904. About two years later in New York City he was knocked down by a cab, which passed over his neck. From that time an incurable mental and nervous disease set in and he died in New York, Jan. 23, 1908.
6Picking out special compositions of MacDowell's for discussion is not an easy task, owing to the almost uniform excellence and the total dissimilarity of subject-matter and treatment. The selections in this case are made on the basis of those compositions probably best known to the public. Under this head the Indian Suite for orchestra probably comes first. In a prefatory note Mr. MacDowell acknowledges the source of his themes for this to be the music of American Indian folk-songs, but the treatment is quite his own. Vigorous and strong in construction, masterly in arrangement of theme against theme, it is finished with a refinement and delicacy which adds much of smoothness in the sequence of its unusual and at times almost bizarre motives. It is one of the very first American compositions for orchestra and holds its own when placed on a program with such works as Tschaikowski's Sixth Symphony. The four piano sonatas are all masterly. In the first, the Tragica, unlike most of his compositions, the poetical inspiration is not definitely designated, but this is not necessary, and the directness and the dignity with which he has achieved his results are impressive. There is nothing theatrical or sentimental about it. It is a simple but marvelously artistic statement of tragedy as one of the facts of life. The Eroica is the second sonata chronologically, and bears the subtitle, A Flower from the Realm of King Arthur. Expressive of the highest human emotion, it is one of the most adequate musical versions of the Arthurian stories that has been made. Full of form and color, and wonderful in its descriptive power is the Norse Sonata, dedicated to Edvard Grieg. The picturesqueness of this subject appealed to the poetic side of the man, and the result is a tone-picture of almost barbaric splendor. Some of the passages are primitively vigorous in character, others are poignant with his own Gaelic tenderness. The Keltic Sonata is probably his masterpiece. Hauntingly beautiful, with the strange, dim beauty of ancient legends, this musical composition mirrors all the dream glory of the heroic Gaelic world. Another field in which MacDowell has composed much is that of song-writing. In this smaller form of musical composition he has written some things that are wonderful bits of musical expression. It is
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