Edward MacDowell | Page 5

as an impressionist, accomplishing striking
effects with a few bold, characteristic strokes, MacDowell still works
out his tone picture with considerable detail, carefully indicating the
results he wishes to achieve. He reminds one in his methods of Corot,
the great landscape painter. He will tell you to play a passage "very
tenderly," 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