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."



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.



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."



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.



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

THE END