Edward MacDowell | Page 5

or "somewhat savagely," or "daintily and joyously," not being content with the usual color terms. When he is loud, he is very, very loud, and in the same composition will have a passage marked with four p's. He likes contrasts and uses them very effectively. His music has the charm of infinite variety, but there is an insistent note of sombreness pervading most of it that is heard even above the majesty of the "Sea Pieces," the beauty of the "Woodland Sketches" and the humor of the "Marionettes." In the "New England Idyls" there is a plaintive little wail, "From a Log Cabin," the rustic retreat in the woods at Peterboro, his "house of dreams untold," where MacDowell did most of his later composition. It speaks of solitude, isolation and a moan of the wind is heard in the tree tops, with an answering moan from the heart of a man who may have had some premonition of his fate.
He is the first composer of world-note since Brahms who did his best work for the piano. Others have used that instrument as a means merely, reserving their crowning efforts for the orchestra, where it is, of course, far less difficult to achieve fine effects. While he wrote successful orchestral suites, he dignified the single instrument by devoting his first thought to piano literature.
His humorous suite, "The Marionettes," very strongly suggests Jerome K. Jerome's "Stageland," in which the villain is represented as an individual who always wears a clean collar and smokes a cigarette. The hero approaches the heroine from the rear and "breathes his attachment down her back," and the poor heroine is pursued by the relentless storm, while on the other side of the street the sun is shining. MacDowell portrays the coquettish "Soubrette," the longing "Lover," the strong-charactered "Witch," the gay "Clown," the sinister "Villain" and the simple, tender "Sweetheart," with a Prologue indicating "sturdy good humor" and an Epilogue to be rendered "musingly, with deep feeling." The suite is very attractive and in sharp contrast to his romantic, heroic and lyric work.
Another potent factor in the formation of MacDowell's style of composition was his love of nature. No one has put truer brooks, birds, flowers, trees, meadows or sea into tone. Whenever he "loafed and invited his soul," the tired, city-worn world reaped the benefit. His lesser piano compositions may be, in a sense, considered in the light of a diary. We are with him in a fisherman's hut, in deep woods, on a deserted farm, in the haunted house, by the lily pond, in mid-ocean, by a meadow brook, by smoldering embers, always seeing the picture, hearing the voices or feeling the atmosphere that appealed to his artist mind. The charm of common things, the ever-present beauty and harmony in all forms of life, supplied him with endless inspiration.
In portraying nature, he is in no sense a copyist. He does not describe a scene, an occasion or an object, but suggests it, being an adept in the use of musical metaphor. Robert Louis Stevenson says that the one art in literature is to omit. "If I knew how to omit," says he, "I should ask no other knowledge." Painters tell us that the highest evidence of skill in transferring nature to canvas is to avoid too much detail, and they squint up their eyes in order not to see too much. These standards prove MacDowell the artist. He does not make the mistake that so many preachers and public teachers do of presuming upon the ignorance or stupidity of his hearers, but leaves something to their imagination and inner artistic senses.
There is a reverence of nature, a depth of love that amounts almost to sadness, in this man's work that stamps him the pantheist in the highest sense. This is, I think, a common characteristic of the mystic. Their consciousness of the oneness of all life is so perfect that God is seen even in its lowest forms. Sermons are read in stones and books in the running brooks. This suggests MacDowell's kinship to Shakespeare, Ruskin, Emerson and Thoreau; but it is a limitless analogy. All genius, in the end, is of one blood, and MacDowell is unquestionably a genius.
When one is entering upon a literary career, the first injunction is to "acquire a style." "But how?" asks the aspirant. Some say by becoming familiar with the forms of expression of the best authors, and such advise that you read without stint. Others bid you write, write incessantly about everything under the sun, until by long practice you evolve a style of your own, unhampered in its originality by the memory of the achievements of others resulting from much reading. There are still others who advise an equal division of time between study of the classics