Edward MacDowell: A Great American Tone Poet, His Life and Music

E-text prepared by David Newman, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
A Great American Tone Poet, His Life and Music
Author of Edward Elgar , Sir Charles V. Stanford , etc.
With a Portrait of Edward MacDowell and Musical Illustrations in the Text
New York: E.P. Dutton & Company 681 Fifth Avenue
1922
I do like the works of the American composer MacDowell! What a musician! He is sincere and personal—what a poet—what exquisite harmonies!—Jules Massenet.
I consider MacDowell the ideally endowed composer.—Edvard Grieg.
(Published as Critical and Historical Essays ).
_For it is in the nature of the spiritual part of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand, a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with their strange fight against all the laws of gravity, striving upward unceasingly, bring us something of hope and faith; the sight of them cheers us. A land without trees is depressing and gloomy.
In spite of the strange twistings of ultra modern music, a simple melody still embodies the same pathos for us that it did for our grandparents.