Edward MacDowell | Page 8

that opened the
way to fame, it was after his return to America that he did his best work,
when he freed himself from the chance of unconscious imitation and
reflection and gave rein to individuality and imagination in the
Peterboro retreat. Weber says: "To be a true artist you must be a true
man." This tribute has been paid MacDowell by his associates: they say
he was a true man. Nobleness has been called the chief characteristic
alike of himself and his music, with a simplicity that is ever the
accompaniment of real nobility. In playing, he had certain little tricks
of using his fingers that produced certain effects, but he did not teach
these to his pupils, preferring that they should use their own ingenuity,
explaining: "You might find a better way than mine," showing a
modest willingness to be taught, even by his own pupils, instead of
always posing as master. He never forced his personality, as a man or
as a musician, upon any one, choosing rather to encourage and foster
originality.
Much is said and written about an American national music. I am
reminded of a colored mammy who was left in charge of "Marse John"
and the house while "Miss Mary an' de chillun" were away at the
springs. When the larder needed replenishing she would break the news
to her employer like this: "Marse John?" "Yes, Mammy!" "You know
the flour?" "Yes, Mammy!" "Well, there ain't none!" It is even so with
our national music--"there ain't none."
Arthur Farwell, president of the American Music Society, thinks
differently. He says: "One must make a very broad study of the works
of eighty or one hundred American composers before he will begin to
perceive the indisputable American qualities arising in our music. The
endeavor not to repeat, parrot-like, the formulæ of the Old World has
driven many American composers to seek out new inventions and has
led to a freshness, in a considerable mass of American work, as in
MacDowell's, which may be said to be directly a product of American
conditions."

Music is seldom a thing of nationality or locality. Early opera in
Germany was Italian and the French grand opera school was founded
by a Florentine. The style of music that appeals most keenly to the
people of a country or community influences largely the method and
manner of its native composers. Authors, musical and literary, write
more often to fill a demand, subjectively felt perhaps, than to create one
or to establish a form representative of their nation or section, though
occasionally, when the author is a genius and fearlessly gives
expression to his own divinity, regardless of precedent, he finds himself
responsible for a new order, though in that case the individuality of the
author is the leaven that leaveneth the lump, and not the locality.
We are only beginning, as a nation, to recognize music as an essential
to general culture. A new country must become familiar with and learn
to appreciate what has already been done along artistic lines before it is
capable of evolving its own type in any permanent, living fashion. We
have no people's music. "Give me, oh give me, the man who sings at
his work," said Carlyle, and I often think when I hear an American
laborer singing at his task that if dear old Carlyle were only alive and I
could give him the unmelodious disturber of the public peace, the
pleasure would be all mine. American music, the music of the people,
is built upon the Puritan hymn tunes and savors of the persecution that
made the Pilgrim Fathers fly to the new land.
Some think that the negro melodies should form the basis of our
American music; but why? The negro is an importation, not a native,
and if we want the real thing, it seems to me that we will have to find it
in the Indian melodies, but it will take artistic handling to develop them
from aboriginal simplicity to the intricacy necessary to represent in any
sense present-day, cosmopolitan America.
Universality is just now the philosophical ideal, and it seems to me that
America, the composite nation, is the proper center from which such a
spirit should emanate. Why try to foster the limited local idea with
regard to music, or any artistic or intellectual pursuit? Why encourage
the production of distinctive American music in a country in which
there is not even a distinctive type of face or mode of speech? Here is a

Virginian, descended from an American Indian and an English colonist,
living next door to a Plymouth Rock Yankee whose husband is a
French Canadian. Across the street is a German-American born in the
Middle West, who is married to a Californian of Spanish lineage. My