Edward MacDowell | Page 4

of
his slaughtered victims, and an aspiring young composer who adored
him could not help imbibing some of his power.
Wagner thought that the musician should write his own lines in opera
or song, and conceived and mastered a new form, taking poetry into
music just as Sidney Lanier took music into poetry in his "Science of
English Verse." Wagner also thought that because of the exactness of
musical science, a composer became practically the actor of each of his
parts, while the dramatic author could never be sure what meaning
would be read into his lines.
The native poetic temperament of MacDowell and his almost invariable
use of lines, figures or stanzas of poetry as inspiration in composition

leads one to believe that he would have attempted opera when he had
grown to it. This was one of the few musical forms that he did not
essay. Perhaps he was of the opinion of Beethoven, as Wagner
conceived him, who said when speaking of opera: "The man who
created a true_ musical drama would be looked upon as a fool--and
would _be one in very truth if he did not keep such a thing to himself,
but wanted to bring it before the public."
MacDowell is frequently called a mystic, and most of his efforts
breathe the Celtic spirit, which is full of melancholy, romance and
tenderness. Ghosts creep through their pages and wandering, restless
spirits call from his most characteristic harmonies. Wagner was a
mystic at sixteen, dwelling largely in the abstract, but grew out of this,
through varied experience, into an active philosopher, with every
objective faculty on the alert, and thus escaped, perhaps, the fate of
MacDowell.
The literary loves of MacDowell, who supplied him with such a wealth
of inspiration, were Goethe, Heine, Shakespeare, Tennyson and Keats,
and he was himself a poet of no mean ability. Lawrence Gilman says,
in his thorough analysis of his work, that, writing as he usually does
from some poetic theme, the effect is lost if the hearer does not know
the idea around which the composition is woven. For instance, one is
apt to take "A.D. 1620" for a funeral dirge, just to hear it without
knowledge of the subject, as it somewhat resembles the Chopin Funeral
March; but the title suggests something historic, and knowing the lines
that inspired it, one can easily distinguish the waves and the majestic
movement of a great ship putting out to sea.
Naturally, MacDowell drew heavily upon the German poets, Goethe
and Heine, in his earlier works, as he began his serious study of
composition in Germany. Equally naturally did he turn to Tennyson, as
they are alike in psychic development and in their powers of
interpretation of nature. Recently, in Lincoln, England, a new statue of
Tennyson was unveiled. It is by Watts, and represents the poet clad in a
cape overcoat, with slouch hat in hand and his dog at his side. He and
his dumb friend have been strolling in the woods and his head is bent

over an uprooted flower held lovingly in his hand. Underneath are the
lines which inspired the striking pose:
"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold
you here, root and all, in my hand.
Little flower--but if I could
understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know
what God and man is."
It is a beautiful conception, the big, tall man contemplating thus
reverently, with bared head, the tender epitome of life. The dog, with
head upraised, points a comprehending nose in the direction of his
poet-master's find, and looks as if he longed to help him unravel the
mystery. MacDowell would adore this piece of sculpture, for he sought
the secret of life in flower and brook and landscape, in mountain and
vale and sea.
Gilman compares the "Sea Pieces" to Walt Whitman and Swinburne.
Like Whitman, MacDowell is no strict adherent to set forms, placing
inspiration ahead of tradition. Some of his most beautiful

compositions are very brief. Poe claims that there is no such thing in
existence as a "long poem." Since a poem only deserves the name in
proportion to its power to excite and elevate the soul, and a sustained
condition of soul excitement and elevation is a psychic impossibility,
the oft-used phrase is a contradiction in terms. Applying this idea to the
familiar piano compositions of MacDowell, they have every right to be
called "tone poems." Poetry is the color-work of the mind, as
distinguished from its sculpture and architecture, which represent mere
form. There is more than form in the compositions under consideration;
the tinge of color is everywhere, the wave of poetry that produces soul
excitement and elevation, from signature to final chord. While he
handles a subject broadly,