Autograph of Edward MacDowell

The matter of precedence in creative art is as hopeless of solution as it is unimportant. And yet it seems appropriate to say, in writing of E. A. MacDowell, that an almost unanimous vote would grant him rank as the greatest of American composers, while not a few ballots would indicate him as the best of living music writers.

But this, to repeat, is not vital, the main thing being that MacDowell has a distinct and impressive individuality, and uses his profound scholarship in the pursuit of novelty that is not cheaply sensational, and is yet novelty. He has, for instance, theories as to the textures of sounds, and his chord-formations and progressions are quite his own.

His compositions are superb processions, in which each participant is got up with the utmost personal splendor. His generalship is great enough to preserve the unity and the progress of the pageant. With him no note in the melody is allowed to go neglected, ill-mounted on common chords in the bass, or cheap-garbed in trite triads. Each tone is made to suggest something of its multitudinous possibilities. Through any geometrical point, an infinite number of lines can be drawn. This is almost the case with any note of a melody. It is the recognition and the practice of this truth that gives the latter-day schools of music such a lusciousness and warmth of harmony. No one is a more earnest student of these effects than MacDowell.

He believes that it is necessary, at this late day, if you would have a chord "bite," to put a trace of acid in its sweetness. With this clue in mind, his unusual procedures become more explicable without losing their charm.

New York is rather the Mecca than the birthplace of artists, but it can boast the nativity of MacDowell, who improvised his first songs here December 18, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa CarreÑo, to whom he has dedicated his second concerto for the piano.

In 1876 he went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition. The influence of Raff is of the utmost importance in MacDowell's music, and I have been told that the great romancist made a protÉgÉ of him, and would lock him in a room for hours till he had worked out the most appalling musical problems. Through Raff's influence he became first piano teacher at the Darmstadt Conservatorium in 1881. The next year Raff introduced him to Liszt, who became so enthusiastic over his compositions that he got him the honor of playing his first piano suite before the formidable Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein, which accorded him a warm reception. The following years were spent in successful concert work, till 1884, when MacDowell settled down to teaching and composing in Wiesbaden. Four years later he came to Boston, writing, teaching, and giving occasional concerts. Thence he returned to New York, where he was called to the professorship of music at Columbia University. Princeton University has given him that unmusical degree, Mus. Doc.

MacDowell has met little or none of that critical recalcitrance that blocked the early success of so many masters. His works succeeded from the first in winning serious favor; they have been much played in Germany, in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and Paris, one of them having been performed three times in a single season at Breslau.

MacDowell's Scotch ancestry is always telling tales on him. The "Scotch snap" is a constant rhythmic device, the old scale and the old Scottish cadences seem to be native to his heart. Perhaps one might find some kinship between MacDowell and the contemporary Glasgow school of painters, that clique so isolated, so daring, and yet so earnest and solid. Says James Huneker in a monograph published some years ago: "His coloring reminds me at times of Grieg, but when I tracked the resemblance to its lair, I found only Scotch, as Grieg's grand-folk were Greggs, and from Scotland. It is all Northern music with something elemental in it, and absolutely free from the heavy, languorous odors of the South or the morbidezza of Poland."

Some of MacDowell's most direct writing has been in the setting of the poems of Burns, such as "Deserted" ("Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," op. 9), "Menie," and "My Jean" (op. 34). These are strongly marked by that ineffably fine melodic flavor characteristic of Scottish music, while in the accompaniments they admit a touch of the composer's own individuality. In his accompaniments it is noteworthy that he is almost never strictly contramelodic.

The songs of opera 11 and 12 have a decided Teutonism, but he has found himself by opus 40, a volume of "Six Love Songs," containing half a dozen flawless gems it is a pity the public should not know more widely. A later book, "Eight Songs" (op. 47), is also a cluster of worthies. The lilt and sympathy of "The Robin Sings in the Apple-tree," and its unobtrusive new harmonies and novel effects, in strange accord with truth of expression, mark all the other songs, particularly the "Midsummer Lullaby," with its accompaniment as delicately tinted as summer clouds. Especially noble is "The Sea," which has all the boom and roll of the deep-brooding ocean.

His collections of flower-songs (op. 26) I confess not liking. Though they are not without a certain exquisiteness, they seem overdainty and wastefully frail, excepting, possibly, the "Clover" and the "Blue-bell." It is not at all their brevity, but their triviality, that vexes an admirer of the large ability that labored over them. They are dedicated to Emilio Agramonte, one of MacDowell's first prophets, and one of the earliest and most active agents for the recognition of the American composer.

In the lyrics in opus 56 and opus 58 MacDowell has turned song to the unusual purposes of a landscape impressionism of places and moods rather than people.

For men's voices there are some deftly composed numbers curiously devoted to lullaby subjects. The barcarolle for mixed chorus and accompaniment on the piano for four hands obtains a wealth of color, enhanced by the constant division of the voices.

Studying as he did with Raff, it is but natural that MacDowell should have been influenced strongly toward the poetic and fantastic and programmatic elements that mark the "Forest Symphony" and the "Lenore Overture" of his master.

It is hard to say just how far this descriptive music can go. The skill of each composer must dictate his own limits. As an example of successful pieces of this kind, consider MacDowell's "The Eagle." It is the musical realization of Tennyson's well-known poem:

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."

Of course the crag and the crooked hands and the azure world must be granted the composer, but general exaltation and loneliness are expressed in the severe melody of the opening. The wrinkling and crawling of the sea far below are splendidly achieved in the soft, shimmering liquidity of the music. Then there are two abrupt, but soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a sudden precipitation down the keyboard, fortississimo, that represents the thunderous swoop of the eagle with startling effect.

On the other hand, the "Moonshine" seems to be attempting too much. "Winter" does better, for it has a freezing stream, a mill-wheel, and a "widow bird." These "four little poems" of opus 32 had been preceded by six fine "Idylls" based on lyrics of Goethe's. The first, a forest scene, has a distinct flavor of the woods, the second is all laziness and drowsiness, and the third is moonlight mystery. The fourth is as intense in its suppressed spring ecstasy as the radiant poem itself singing how

"Soft the ripples spill and hurry
To the opulent embankment."

The six short "Poems" (op. 31) based on poems of Heine's are particularly successful, especially in the excellent opportunity of the lyric describing the wail of the Scottish woman who plays her harp on the cliff, and sings above the raging of sea and wind. The third catches most happily the whimsicality of the poet's reminiscences of childhood, but hardly, I think, the contrasting depth and wildness of his complaint that, along with childhood's games, have vanished Faith and Love and Truth. In the last, however, the cheery majesty that realizes Heine's likening of Death to a cool night after the sultry day of Life, is superb.

Then there are some four-hand pieces, two collections, that leave no excuse for clinging to the hackneyed classics or modern trash. They are not at all difficult, and the second player has something to employ his mind besides accompanying chords. They are meaty, and effective almost to the point of catchiness. The "Tale of the Knights" is full of chivalric fire and martial swing, while the "Ballad" is as exquisitely dainty as a peach-blossom. The "Hindoo Maiden" has a deal of the thoroughly Oriental color and feeling that distinguish the three solos of "Les Orientales," of which "Clair de Lune" is one of his most original and graceful writings. The duet, "In Tyrol," has a wonderful crystal carillon and a quaint shepherd piping a faint reminiscence of the Wagnerian school of shepherds. This is one of a series of "Moon Pictures" for four hands, based on Hans Christian Andersen's lore. Two concertos for piano and orchestra are dazzling feats of virtuosity; one of them is reviewed at length in A.J. Goodrich' book, "Musical Analysis." He has written also a book of artistic moment called "Twelve Virtuoso-Studies," and two books of actual gymnastics for piano practice.